MyHeritage releases breakthrough Record
Matching technology
for family history
Discoveries made easy: Millions of MyHeritage
users to automatically receive relevant newspaper clippings and historical
records, adding color to their family history
PROVO, Utah & LONDON & TEL AVIV,
Israel – September 19, 2012: MyHeritage, the world’s
largest family network, today announced the release of Record Matching, an
innovative new technology set to change the face of the family history market.
Record Matching will help millions of families learn more about their past by
automatically discovering relevant historical records and newspaper articles
dating back 300 years.
Record Matching is the next generation of
family history exploration. It saves time by automating online research for
users’ family trees, breaking through “brick walls” for dedicated genealogists,
and giving beginners a significant boost with their family tree research. It
works by comparing more than one billion profiles in family trees created by
MyHeritage users to more than four billion historical records, to find relevant
matches. It’s the only service of its kind to automatically research newspaper
articles, books and other free text content through semantic analysis, to find
articles that can shed light on the actual lives, personalities and
achievements of one’s ancestors. The Internet has helped bring
family history to mainstream audiences, by allowing some of the research
traditionally done in libraries and archives to be done online. Record Matching
now simplifies online research by conducting it automatically.
Supporting 38 languages, MyHeritage has become the trusted home
on the web for families worldwide wishing to explore their family history,
share memories and stay connected. In addition to its expertise on collaborative
family tree building, over the past year MyHeritage has positioned itself as a
leading provider of historical records. Record Matching is an add-on feature
for SuperSearch, the search engine for historical records successfully released
by MyHeritage in June 2012.
MyHeritage Founder and CEO, Gilad Japhet, said: “Record Matching
is a family history discovery maker and time saver, designed to delight both
dedicated family historians and people with a casual interest in their
ancestry. Over the past year we’ve expanded our consumer offering by
complementing our social family tree network with a substantial amount of
historical content. Record Matching now ties these two assets together, adding
exciting new value for our users and giving us a unique edge in the family
history market. It’s a significant step towards realizing our goal of bringing
family history to the masses.”
Record Matching utilizes the current global pool of more than
four billion records on MyHeritage, including strong collections in the USA,
UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada, with more content being added daily for
additional countries. Users can receive birth, marriage and divorce documents,
gravestone photos, death, burial and census information, military, immigration
and other types of records in their Record Matches. More information about the
lives of relatives and ancestors can be revealed in Record Matches from the
world’s largest historical newspaper collection licensed to MyHeritage
(currently about 120 million pages dating back to the 18th century), books and
other free text materials. Record Matches also cover the 1930 and 1940 US
census records and the content from MyHeritage-owned family history websites, WorldVitalRecords
Developed in-house by MyHeritage engineers and
family history experts, Record Matching technology is designed to mimic the
work of a family historian as much as possible, finding matches that a human
would consider plausible, and ruling out matches that a researcher would consider
as incorrect. Based on multiple genealogical algorithms that match information
in the record (names, dates, facts, relationships, etc.) to the information in
the family tree, semantic analysis, statistical engines and a false positive
prevention sub-system, Record Matching provides a high degree of accuracy
without sacrificing flexibility. Through its use of massive computational
resources and systematic approach of comparing every person to every record,
Record Matching makes discoveries that many users would not have the time or
luck to find on their own.
Record Matching technology augments
MyHeritage’s flagship Smart Matching™ technology that compares family trees to
other family trees. The two technologies work together in a cycle that
constantly pushes forward the users' knowledge of their family history.
MyHeritage users will receive weekly email updates of their new Record Matches.
On the MyHeritage.com website, all Record Matches found are consolidated in one
interactive report, where users can conveniently review, filter, sort, confirm
and reject their matches.
Record Matching has flexible phonetic and
multilingual capabilities when researching names, covering many possible
synonyms, different spellings and international variations. Record
Matches have an individual confidence score and can be viewed by person or by
data collection. Additional features, such as saving information from Record
Matches into online family trees, creating references and source citations and
displaying real-time matches whenever a new person is added into the tree, will
be added before the end of 2012.
As of today, Record Matching will run periodically for every
user who has a family tree on MyHeritage. Record Matches found will be
displayed for free as a shortened extract. For full access to the historical
records delivered by Record Matches, MyHeritage offers affordable data
subscription plans and pay-as-you-go credits which are also good for use on
SuperSearch, the MyHeritage search engine for historical records. In
complimentary collections under license, such as Ellis Island and Find-A-Grave,
MyHeritage users will enjoy full access to the Record Matches for free. Family
tree enthusiasts interested in receiving Record Matches are welcome to sign up
for free at MyHeritage, import their family tree or build
a new one using the site’s friendly tools, and receive their matches in less
than 24 hours.
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