Suggestions

PP have to disagree with you. When I have less common name I usually just type in the name only and hit search. I know sometimes many pages come up but I then narrow it down sometimes by approx DOB and then location or between census records. So easy

A standard membership uses the old scrolling method with the various qtrs
Sometimes wish both option were available for Prem members :-( :-(

NanaSue, The search on GR only gives you the option to search bmd by the year of that event +/- 10 years regardless of what subscription you have,

It does not give you the option to search a death based on the year of birth and for deaths after 1969 when actual dob was listed on the death index where as Ancestry does

use this link to see the difference for births, marriages and deaths

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/rectype/vital/freebmd/bmd.aspx

Roy

If you are a GR Premier subscriber you can search by deaths, births, marriages and anything else all seperately. Having found the deaths I actually worked back and found several birth certs :-D :-D

Stephen_SG , you are correct search all depends on how you use it

But ancestry V freebmd

freebmd can only be searched using the start date and the finish date of an event

ancestry can be searched using the year plus and minus up to 20 years of the death/event plus the year of birth plus or minus up to 20 years

so yes ancestry use the same data base as freebmd but ancestry use a more flexible and superior format for searching that data base

Roy

Oddly enough regardless of the way in which users enter dates and time there is an underlying method to store this data in the same way. For stuff like banking or e-mail the absolute transaction date and time can be stored not just the relative date.

Thus whatever the way the dates are entered there is no reason why they cannot be used for search and displayed in a way that is meaningful for the user location. Unfortuna

However don't forget 1752 and all that.

Here though is how dates are handled with the current version of GED:
http://savage.net.au/Perl-modules/html/Gedcom/Date.html

GEDCOM 6.0 remains in limbo. The recent Genes convention in the USA (sponsored by BrightSolid) was supposed to sort this out 'cos LDS took the ball away and wouldn't play nice.



http://www.crowl.org/lawrence/time/britgreg.html

Problem is ....................


everyone enters dates differently on their trees


and people can not be compelled to a "one size fit all" method.


Plus, lots of people may not know the birth/death date ........... or are not sure about their information and so do not enter it.





sylvia

Thanks for your comments. The sites you're referring to seem to cover records for England & Wales only. The records I'm looking for are Northern Ireland ones and they seem to be a bit more elusive.
I can obtain burial records for a few family members through the Belfast City Council burial records and they show the age at death, but not a date of birth.
So, being able to search for matches to other trees through the date of death would be useful.

Stephen_SG, I beg to differ, freebmd are not complete they are only transcribed up to abt 1960

http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/progress.shtml

you cannot search freebmd by age or dob on the link you provided

Ancestry have the freebmd records which can be searched by birth year as well as their own transcribed records up to 2005

Ancestry is also easier to search the bmd index images than freebmd

the only real advantage that freebmd has over Ancestry is the ability to use the Phonetic search surnames facility

On ancestry you have the option to enter birth year +/- when searching deaths

FreeBMD Death Index: 1837-1915

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=8914

on the Death Index: 1916-2006 you can search by the actual birth date

Actual date of birth first appeared on the index i believe in 1969

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=7579

Roy

Any possibility that an option to search by date of death or age at death could be added in the future?
The further back in my family tree I go the dates of birth get lost, but, approximate dates of death/age at death is known.

I don't know about anyone else, but I would find this useful.