Some of the best success stories we hear from customers have to do with connections they’ve made with other customers. Long-lost siblings reuniting. Distant cousins breaking down each other’s research brick walls. People willing to take a photograph of a headstone for someone in another state. That’s why we’ve improved our Public Profile pages to help make connecting easier.

Your Public Profile is the place where you store information about you: your picture (if you like), your research interests and experience, your family trees and photographs, and your contact information (you don’t have to provide your e-mail address—you can be contacted anonymously through the Ancestry connection services).

By keeping your profile up to date—or filling one out if you haven’t already—you improve the kind of connections you can make. Other members can better evaluate your information so the right people contact you. And, if you enter your research interests, we can use that information to suggest members you may want to contact.

Here are some of the major improvements we’ve made to the Public Profile page:

1. Room for a more prominent photograph.
2. An “About Me” section, where you can write a brief paragraph about yourself and your interests (plus, the ability to show your real name rather than your user name, if you choose).
3. A place to list research activities you can help people with (e.g., taking pictures of headstones from a local cemetery, offering research advice, or translating a document).
4. A “Recently Added Content” section that showcases the public photos and content you’ve added.
5. Links to your public trees.
6. Links to your message board favorites and the message boards you administer, if any.

To update your Public Profile go to the homepage and click “My Account”; then, click “Edit your profile” in “My Account Information.” Click the pencil icon in any section of the Public Profile to edit that particular section. Or, to edit/create your Public Profile, just click here. 

You may also be interested to know that there is a “Profile and contact settings” section at the bottom of the page where you can customize your settings so that only the content you choose will appear on the page. This allows you to retain as much privacy as you want. 

Creating or updating your Profile Page takes only a few minutes, but the dividends can be tremendous. I encourage you to get your information out there so you can start making the connections that break down brick walls.