A "Phonetically like" search on Surname can get odd results for Suwalki records.  For example, searching "Silberman"  I find a low percentage of odd given names that include : Sorry, Well then, The circus, Councilman, and Yes,David.    There are also a few dodgy surname results  such as WINDOW, IDENT  and GLASSES. These do not show up when using "Sounds like" and "Silberman", or "is Exactly" and the correct surname (Zylberman, Zilberman, or Sylberman).

I cannot seem to find similar results for other gubernia. 

Has anyone else had similar results?   

I wrote to "webmaster@..." in March and April, but these results persist.

Paul Hattori
London UK

SHADUR, SADUR, SHADER, SADER, CHADOUR, SADOUR, SHADOUR,  SZADUR from Salakas, Lithuania
MINDEL, MINDELL from Utena and Vyzuonos, Lithuania
FELLER from Pabrade, Lithuania

"A "Phonetically like" search on Surname can get odd results for Suwalki records.  For example, searching "Silberman"  I find a low percentage of odd given names that include : Sorry, Well then, The circus, Councilman, and Yes,David."

As you say, there are a "Phoenetically like" and a "Sounds like" when searching. Phonetically gets you many fewer results - and some odd things. I always us "Sounds like", and then I have everything to search through. They are 2 different Soundex systems, but I don't know why anyone would bother with Phonetically like; maybe an IT Pro can tell us why, but it doesn't really matter.

Sally Bruckheimer
Princeton, NJ

Sounds like uses Daitch-Mokotoff soundex and produces many false positive results.

Phonetic uses Beider Morse phonetic matches and removes most of the false positives.

It is worth trying both but phonetic is superior.

Michael Tobias
Glasgow, Scotland