Digital obituary indexing has introduced an unexpected complication: synthetic data harvesting. Automated scrapers monitor public obituary feeds, scrape biographical snippets, and auto-generate monetized pages optimized for broad search queries. These scraped listings frequently swap biographical details between different people sharing similar names.
A researcher looking for Emily Ruth May might land on a page that pairs an authentic 1982 notice from Indiana with a guestbook created for an Emily Ruth in Florida whose services occurred in May 2014. These synthetic records distort genealogical trees and cause costly misdirections when ordering archival birth or probate certificates.
Combating these errors requires checking records against physical cemetery records. Sexton registers, deed files, and gravestone inscriptions provide immutable physical markers. Stone engravings rarely lie; a physical marker confirming birth, death, and spousal relationships offers concrete baseline facts that digital algorithms cannot distort.
