Help Centre - Frequently Asked Questions

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Complete FAQ Listing

What are Hot Matches?

Hot Matches randomly takes 50 names from your tree, excluding common names such as Smith and Jones, and matches them with names on other members' trees. We also match the year and place of birth. You can then contact the member to see if you might possibly be related.

Super Hot Matches are a way of providing you with closer matches for names in your tree.  Super Hot Matches match relations in other members' trees whose name, year of birth and parents match relations in your tree, providing a stronger match than normal hot matches. Occasionally you will find that there are no Super Hot Matches when you know there should be. It is simply because they haven't been picked up by our system. However, you will probably find that the Super Hot Match will be picked up in the future.

When you view your Hot Matches, you'll see a column that says 'In my contacts?'. If it says 'yes' then it means you have already been in touch with this member. To check your correspondence with them you just need to go to Messages and look at your contacts. You should see them listed and copies of all the emails you have sent to each other.

If there aren't any matches for you, you won't get any, but you should see a message on your homepage to let you know that we haven't been able to find you any matches this time.

If you decide you don't like Hot Matches at all you can just unsubscribe from them on the My Account - Email preferences page.

The British Newspaper Archive

British Newspaper Archive

Read about historical events at the time they were happening. Perhaps you'll discover your ancestor in their local newspaper?

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