My Thoughts on Ancestry's New Home page ...

A couple of days ago, I happened to read Ancestry blog's posts 1 and 2 on the new home page, and I thought I would post my thoughts here. Even after I read the posts and the comments, I also decided to log into Ancestry. (I don't have a subscription with Ancestry. My sign-in is due to the rootsweb message boards.)

So, what was my impression of the new home page? I don't think the new home page is anything special. It's just so-so to me. Obviously, I don't find the new home page impressive, but I also don't see why the new home page is special. The home page, to me, appears to be nothing I haven't seen before. Of course, I haven't tried searching through this new home page. (If the search results are just as poor as the new search, my opinion will probably a bit different than it is now.) I realize that websites will change their pages around at times, but this change does not strike me as something new. It looks very similar to the main Ancestry home page that I see before I log into the site.

One of the things that I did notice was that family trees were put at the top of the page. I don't have a family tree connected to my home page, so I can still see where the search engine is from my computer screen. I personally do not want to put my family tree online, for privacy and safety concerns, so the addition of having a family tree box at the top of the page just makes me want even less to create a tree with Ancestry. Plus, I don't believe adding a "create your family tree" box to the top of the page will sit well with Ancestry's customers. I think adding that box just makes people feel that ancestry only cares about creating family tree databases. In light of incidents that happened last year, I think many genealogists are wary about sharing any information with Ancestry, especially if they believe Ancestry might claim that contributed information as their own. Of course, that's just my thoughts.

So, what do you think? As always, you can leave a comment.