WeRelate:Suggestions/Add Search Engine to Person Pages

Suggestion

Add (or reinstate) search engine feature to Person Pages and Family Pages.

Neutral

  • cos1776

Discussion

If I remember correctly, back when I joined WeRelate (in the 2008-2009 timeframe) it had a Search Engine feature where users could select a link to search for related people/data on the Internet. I'm not sure when that feature disappeared, but I'd like to see it return. With all the recent controversy about imbedded advertisements for MyHeritage within the user text block on Person Pages, it makes me think that (re)creating or (re)instating the Search Engine feature on Person Pages would be a noticeable programming improvement here and negate the need to have any such advertisement to another commercial genealogy website imbedded on Person Pages. An icon such as included to the right could be added to the menu bar or added to the other questionably-useful icon links in the namespace on Person Pages for this function.

I invite other comments (including substantiation of that search feature back in 2008). --BobC 16:00, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

The Find Duplicates in the more menu is effectively a search for similar people. The Search box in the upper right is a general search, taking the entered string and searching on it as a keyword search, but things like "Person:John Doe (3)" give pretty focused results. I don't recall anything more than that but I may have forgotten. --Jrich 04:26, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Please excuse the late reply (missed this one). I think Bobc is referring to an external search for sources vs. and internal one for duplicates. Like him, I think I do recall a link to a pre-populated external Google search existing at one point. If reinstated, it wouldn't bring in any revenue, so it isn't really an apples-to-apples swap for ads. I don't think it is a necessary feature (so I'm essentially neutral on the request), but I wouldn't object to a small icon for this next to the Facebook, etc. icons on Person pages, as long as it opened in a separate window. --cos1776 18:19, 28 May 2017 (UTC)