Narrowing FMP searches

[Lensgirl]

Hi

is there any way of narrowing down the search results I get for a surname search in the Newspaper archives? My ancestors had the surname of a building society, so I currently have over 20,000 results to search through!

[JudithM]

You can filter the search by "article type" and "Public Tags" so that you only get news or bmd announcements rather than adverts which might help.

[Anne in Carlisle]

Its a nightmare isn't it. You could try putting a first name too but its a bit tedious if you want to do a blanket search. You could just do a few years (or even one year) at a time so its not so daunting. You could just select papers from the correct area of the country but that has its downside as "news" was shared right across the nation and the print in some publications is clearer than other, meaning the OCR will pick it up.
Anne

[Lensgirl]

Unfortunately the articles are news ones rather than adverts as its all to do with new branches and libel cases etc. I also cant do names because sometimes they use initials or Mr! I think im just going to do one location/newspaper at a time and work my way through it!

[Lensgirl]

Ooh ive just found the bit right down the bottom to narrow it down (ive also just realised that it says if something is an advert or not, which had reduced it by 10000!) thanks for that

[Elaine ..Spain]

I sometimes find it is easier to do the initial search on the British Newspaper Archive site - http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
The advanced search option gives you some flexibility with place, dates, search phrases etc.
You get a snippet view and the date/publication details, which you can then search with on FMP.

[jenoco]

I don't know if it will help or not. When searching a common name (mine is Cox) I've found a few articles by putting in the name of the town or village where my ancestors lived as a keyword - found a missing marriage that way which saved me trawling through loads of entries.