Find a Grave Team

New Search on Find a Grave

We’re excited to announce a new search for Find a Grave memorials! Click here to try it out. Right now the new search looks similar to the regular search, but uses a different search engine. We’ll make updates to its appearance in the future. We’d love for you to try the same search on new search and regular search so you can see how they compare.

Here are some added options for the new search:

  • Last name is no longer required.
  • We’ve added the option to include a spouse, sibling, child or parent in your search.
  • The date range options include +/-1 , +/-3 , +/-5 birth and death years as well as exact, before and after.
  • Search by Contributor ID to find memorials within yours and others management.
  • There is an option to make your name search fuzzy that will help find names which might have a letter missing or a slight misspelling.
  • Added partial or prefix search similar to the old search for the first and middle name fields (Ben will find Benjamin and L will find Larry). The spouse, parent, child or sibling names can also be partial spellings.
  • In the name fields, you can use the ? or * wild cards. ? replaces one letter. * represents 0 to many letters. E.g. Sorens?n or Wil*

There are also some differences that you won’t notice in the fields, but may notice in your results:

  • Today, when a search returns more than 10,000 matches we just show an error message. The new search will show you the first 10,000 matches and the sort options will work on the full result list.
  • If you’ve added a spouse, sibling, child or parent, their name and relationship will be included in the result.
  • We’ve made the search header stay at the top of the screen as you scroll. You can use it to refine your search, sort your results or change the page number to jump to later pages (up to page 500).

We’ve received great feedback and suggestions and look forward to more sent our way through our Beta Search Discussion page, pointed out below, or feedback@findagrave.com. Thanks for all you do, we hope you like the new search!

12 comments

  1. Thank you! I’m really excited about the date range option and the wild cards! Those will make the searching so much easier!

  2. I gave it a trial using my father’s first and last name, year of birth and burial state…came up with no matches.

    • Hi Rita, that seems odd. If there is a memorial then he should come up in the search with this criteria. We’d be happy to help. Feel free to send us an email at support@findagrave.com and mention the new search. We’ll figure this out for you.

  3. With so many spelling variations to old names, the wildcard * is very helpful.
    Location selection is now much more friendly.

    Thank you!

  4. Any updates to the search function will be greatly appreciated. However, due to the great number of memorials now on Findagrave, please consider a search option for those with NO CEMETERY OR CREMATION, ETC. Currently these do not appear in searches, especially if a particular state is noted. Many thanks.

  6. Wonderful! The old search engine was such a frustration. This should be a huge improvement!

  7. Awesome additions!

    On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 8:23 AM Find A Grave News wrote:

    > Katrina posted: ” We’re excited to announce a new search for Find A Grave > memorials! Click here to try it out. Right now the new search looks similar > to the regular search, but uses a different search engine. We’ll make > updates to its appearance in the future. We’d love f” >

  8. Maybe in time, this new and improved “search” may work, but it is not today. Thanks to FAG for thinking of ways to improve the site for us.
    Are you working on sending to me to transcribe headstones in my only language–English?

  10. Looking For S. B. May be Beard. I am related to many of your ancestors

  11. Looking for a person that made a post on husbands death records. His name is Kennethe G McKown jr.,the person that posted was Meredith Moses. She said she was a niece of Ken. I was aware of a half sister(her mother). If Meridith would like info on Ken or his mother Vera Baker, I would love to share with her. I am Sandy McKown, Ken’s wife of 21 yrs., took care of Ken and his mother until the end of their lives.. Will appreciate any info as to how to reach out to Meredith. Thank you

Comments are closed.