I am going to show you how to use the “hints” feature on your Ancestor’s profile page on Ancestry.com to find missed Ancestry hints. You’ve looked right at them and scrolled past not even realizing their importance. You may have even assigned them to the “ignore” panel of purgatory.
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Table of Contents
Your missed Ancestry Hints in Plain Sight
One of the key features on Ancestry.com which helps you research your ancestors is the HINTS panel. This often comes in handy when we’re stuck and we need inspiration or a direction to research. How many times have you found the record you were missing right in the HINTS section?
It’s helped me tremendously. However, if you are only looking for quick wins, low hanging fruit, or a shiny object to chase, you are missing the underlying power of missed Ancestry hints!
Ancestry provides hints in several locations, all of which will produce a list of hints:
- The infamous green leaf
- On your tree
- On your ancestor’s profile page
The Infamous Ancestry green Leaf
We’ve all encountered the infamous green leaf! What a thing of joy it is to see that leaf when we log into our account. It’s lead to wonderful discoveries, but also dead-end rabbit holes. That’s just the nature of research!
This leaf will produce a list of hints.
Ancestry Hints On Your Tree
If you are looking at your family tree in vertical or horizontal view, you will see green boxes and leaves suggesting possible ancestors for you to follow up with as HINTS. These are not absolute values, they are suggestions.
How accurate are they? I’ll touch on this in a few paragraphs. This tree will produce a list of hints.
Ancestry Hints on Your Ancestor’s Profile Page
Here’s where you need to focus to maximize finding missed Ancestry hints! The hints section on your ancestor’s profile page produces a document-rich page of results including source information, images, and even the ability to compare records against what you have in your tree.
This is where you should be doing your detective work! I will show you how to do that in the next section.
If you want more Ancestry tools to help you research: I showcase 15 tools to help you research more effectively.
Ancestry’s Hints Accuracy
Let’s briefly talk about the accuracy of Ancestry’s hints. In my experience of being on Ancestry for over 15 years, it has gotten much better. Like a lot better!
Here’s a proof. In my latest research volley on Ancestry, I was looking at a ghost tree/ThruLines tree/shared tree. What that is is a stripped-down version of my actual, full-blown private family history tree which is strictly to share and use to find DNA matches.
It is a duplicate of my private tree such that If I look at my great-grandfather on the shared tree, the hints Ancestry is showing me is about 90% accurate with what I already know about that person’s actual, Source Hound researched genealogy.
Perhaps there is an algorithm bias built into my having multiple trees on a single account; however, I found it to be accurate on records I did research, yet had not added to my tree yet.
By saying this, I AM NOT ADVOCATING that you simply add in any old hint because Franklin at The Family History Foundation said it’s accurate. I’m not giving you license to add anything without vetting and using the highest genealogical standards in your research.
You still have to do the work.
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How to Evaluate Missed Ancestry Hints
There may be hints on your Ancestor’s profile page under the hints section that you have previously ignored, yet are holding the information you need.
Maybe a name looks wrong, maybe you’ve used the compare tool and it’s not shown you what you expected, or maybe you’ve just hit analysis paralysis.
Here’s your missed Ancestry hints strategy:
- Take stock of your hints
- Use the compare tool
- Look for NEW records
- Look for anomalies
Take Stock of Your Ancestry Hints
When looking at your Ancestry hints listed on your ancestor’s profile page, don’t passively scroll, carefully review and scrutinize each one. Take stock of how many records are on there, the nature and quality of the records, and if they are new.
Note if there are only 3 or 27? This makes a difference because your ancestor might be better documented. Are their duplicate records? If so, this is also good because you have more to go on and it shows that there multiple family historians actively researching your ancestor!
Make a consorted effort to comb through these one by one and evaluate them.
Use The Ancestry Hints Compare Tool
Get in the habit of using the compare button on your ancestor’s hints page. Just click that green slider button and let Ancestry show you a side-by-side comparison of the record details and your tree.
If you want to see more, click on the REVIEW button and a pop-up will appear on the right (it’s actually a slide-in) and you can actively compare the researcher’s information: tree, dates, records, etc.
Look for NEW Ancestry Hints Records
Ancestry is always adding new features to its hints section and it marks newer records with a NEW button. Use this notation to mentally differentiate NEW records from others you may have glossed over before.
If this is the first time you are viewing an ancestor’s hints page, use it to arrange records chronologically.
Look for Missed Ancestry Hints Anomalies
I want to share with you a story about how I initially glossed over an Ancestry hint showing a variant of a record which named a person Patricia and Fannie, when my ancestor’s name is Lucretia. Or, I found an AI-generated record with a name “lo’il Tsnnant.”
I did not get deterred, even though I thought these were strange suggestions like I’ve seen and discarded in the past. However, the source hound instinct in me got my hackle up! I tracked down these records and found that behind the facade of phonetic abnormalities lied records which I could use.
The worst part is that is that the record for a “lo’il Tsnnant” was actually attached to someone’s tree! They never followed up so it was showing on my Ancestry hints. Goodness, please do not do this. I followed the source link to Newspapers.com and found the actual name of the person.
Newspapers.com has uncovered many genealogy secrets for me, including how my grandfather saved someone’s life!
This is a story, but also a parable! Watch the YouTube episode below to see this story in action.
Watch This Episode on YouTube
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Our Family History Is Disappearing Every Day!
Join the quest with 500+ family historians getting Franklin’s Source Hound weekly research breakthroughs — real case studies, source hacks, and the exact strategies that turn brick walls into discoveries.
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Your privacy is sacred — almost as sacred as a primary source. Read our Privacy Policy.
About the Author
Hi there, my name is Franklin, the founder and author of The Family History Foundation.
Our family stories are disappearing every day and it’s crucially important that the next generation is able to learn and appreciate their family history. It is up to you to take up the mantle of responsibility to ensure that how you research today will be passed on tomorrow with the highest standards possible.
I believe that genealogy is not just about names and dates, it’s about your stories and how those stories inform your identity.
With a penchant for storytelling and a background in research, the insights and techniques you learn on The Family History Foundation will help you uncover the incredible stories and identities hidden within the tapestry of your ancestry.
Motto: “The Past ‘Relative’ to the Future.”
Mission: “Let’s make Family History a household word.”
