HELP - What is wrong with links to Ancestry ????

Question

What is going on - all of the links to Ancestry Census for my grandfather do not work - these have have all been working for a long time.  What is going on????

Comments

They work for me. I've got a full subscription via ancestry uk

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And now it works - for me as well - BUT It did not before. ?????

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Please consider using familysearch.org links instead so those of us without ancestry.com subscriptions can access the censuses.  Thanks.

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It doesn't have to be instead - it can be as well as.  Having the link to a paid site is ok if there is nothing else, but it's also ok to link to both pay and free, as the information is often slightly different depending on who (or what) was the transcriber.

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Ancestry and FamilySearch have some sets of source records in common, but not all, and some of those unique record sources are significant for the profile. For things in common such as census records, please include both links. (Please do the same for Find-a-Grave and BillionGraves.)

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What Jillaine is saying is that if you are using an Ancestry link that is under their paid account status only, anyone clicking on that link just get the Ancestry title page telling them to join.  If you are a paid Ancestry member, that link will work for you.  That is why is it is much more useful for most people that are not paid Ancestry members to click on FamilySearch links, as those are free and do not have to be paid for, anyone can click on the link and have it work.

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All,

Interesting that all of the answers seem to be about policy - "You should use Family Search" or a variation of that idea.

But none address the technical problem that is the basis for this question.  

Does anyone have any idea why a link to Ancestry that worked, would not work but now works again?  AND no there was no change in browser, membership status or device being used.

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Gremlins!   This is computer nerd 'speak' for the fact that systems, especially complex systems, will experience a wide variety of issues that could be promulgated by hardware dying, usage peaking, upgrade activities going South, hackers infiltrating, yada, yada, yada.  If one could have had a peak behind the curtains, one would likely have noticed some administrators cursing as they rush to fix whatever problem caused the links to fail and patted themselves on the back when things were set straight.

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Stale Cookies, Browser needed refreshing, slow servers, issues at Ancestry.

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Okey Thom, I just have to say your comment made my day.  Still walking around house laughing.  When I worked for a California County, they only had the A/C going in the computer MAIN room, took an act of those of much higher pay grades to have A/C turned on for any other part of the main government building.  When I was assigned to the 911 center I would take breaks in the computer room, it was nice and cool, but the computer folks would just cuss up a storm for half an hour and be laughing and patting each other on the back the next half hour.  If the entire system did not have some bug going on, the Sheriff system would go down, or the 911 center would ... the last two is what had them cussing cus those had to be on 24-7, the rest of the county offices would have to wait.  But you got me remembering just as if I was sitting there.

Answer 1

I don’t know if this is related but there is an ongoing problem with the “shared” link button inside Ancestry. If you click on this button to get the window to copy the link, the spinner keeps spinning forever. This has been reported to Ancestry, however they would not give a time when this would be fixed.