Exciting news! BillionGraves has been adopted into a new family!
BillionGraves was recently acquired by Otter Creek Holdings (based in Ogden, Utah). Otter Creek Holdings and it’s subsidiaries, My Legacy Memorial and Legacy Mobile, understand the connection people have to Family History. So BillionGraves could not have asked for a better home!
Rest assured; the BillionGraves you’ve come to know and love hasn’t changed. We guarantee:
BillionGraves will ALWAYS be a free service. Our primary goal is and will always be to make records found in cemeteries readily available to people everywhere. We will ensure this by leaving both our website AND mobile app free of charge. For our avid users, we offer extended services including extra record watches, access to all BillionGraves records on your mobile device, and virtual walkthroughs of any cemetery on your device and more are offered through our BillionGraves Plus Account. This is available for only $9.99 per year and coming soon, users will be able to earn the same features by uploading or transcribing enough records (see below).
The BillionGraves team is always seeking to improve the site. We have an excellent team (see About Us page) that is constantly trying to make our site run smoother, be more user friendly, and adjust with the constant growth. With the new owners, this vision will not change. We are still passionate about our goal and we are always focused on reaching it. If you have any feedback for us on what you do or don’t like or any features you think should be added, please email us at info@billiongraves.com. We’d love to hear your input!
This new change is an opportunity for growth. We are especially excited for this change in ownership because it means that BillionGraves will only continue to grow (see below). We are still focused on building the largest headstone database and we won’t stop at one billion graves either!
We still can’t do it without YOU! You are our top priority and we are so grateful for the millions of contributions you make. Thank you for your continuing efforts! Spread the word to your family and friends, too! The more the merrier at BillionGraves!
And BillionGraves is expanding!
Here are some great things you can look forward to:
We are improving our partnership with FamilySearch. Our developers are improving automated methods of connecting BillionGraves records to 
those at FamilySearch. Very soon, users will have the ability to look up a person on FamilySearch and see the BillionGraves records attached to that person. This will include the reverse as well: users will be able to link BillionGraves records to people found in FamilySearch.
More incentive programs are coming soon! So start warming up your smart phones and transcribing fingers! Pretty soon you can earn free things (in the past we’ve given away iPads, T-shirts, BillionGraves Plus Account features and more) with the amount of pictures you take or transcribe.
BillionGraves is forming connections with My Legacy Memorial. BillionGraves is proud to be a part of a company who is involved in other genealogy 
projects such as My Legacy Memorial—a company that puts QR codes on headstones that are linked to a tribute page online about that individual’s life. This turns that headstone into a living memorial where family, friends, historians, or visitors can learn more about them by merely scanning that QR code with their smartphone. Coming soon, the records found on My Legacy Memorial will connect to those at BillionGraves, providing more complete and meaningful records.
More useful services for BillionGraves are on their way! In an effort to make BillionGraves bigger and better, we are making the services we offer on our website and app more useful. For instance, developers are currently making it possible to create family connections and relationships between records already on BillionGraves. Keep an eye out for more upcoming improvements in our system!
Thank you for your loyalty and enthusiasm at this exciting time of growth and expansion!
Add a comment below or contact me at lisa@billiongraves.com.
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Hi-
I have a couple questions.
When will there be another update to the BillionGraves Android app? There are many problems, which I have emailed BillionGraves about in the past, and which others have indicated in the reviews. Some of these include the inaccurate GPS marking, crashing of the app, and photos not appearing after being taken, as if they had been deleted or had never been taken in the first place. The latter is the biggest problem in my opinion, as undoubtedly many graves are being missed due to that.
Secondly, will there ever be a standardization of names being transcribed? I have noticed, and others surely have as well, that many of the names indexed are in all capital letters, all lower case letters, and so on. Many transcribers are not reading the instructions. I was wondering if it were possible for you at BillionGraves to find all names in all capital letters and fix them all at once so that the capital letters are only at the front of the names. Right now, it looks very sloppy and it goes onto FamilySearch looking that way as well.
Thanks,
Thank you for the feedback! We are aware of the glitches in the Android app and we are working to get that updated ASAP.
That is a great observation with the transcribing information. I believe Tom, our customer support guy, contacted you about this. Also, look for an upcoming post in the next month on taking transcribe-able photos as well as transcribing techniques. I will address this as well as other tips to make the transcribing process more easy and efficient.
I agree with E. that said there is no standard format. I have also had this problem and have had to go through all the pics I did and re-do names that were Miss-spelled, all CAPS, Commas and Periods not properly included as per the Stone. Need some type of standard Format!!!
I also agree with E. on the terrible Job the app does with GPS. Some pics I have taken show the Stone out in the middle of the High Way!
The Android app needs updating!
Thanks!
Thomas,
I agree! I am currently working on a transcribing/taking pictures blog post to get the word out about correct transcribing. I’m also working on redoing our tutorials to help our new volunteer transcribers know what is expected of them.
As far as the GPS goes, this sounds like a glitch happened when uploading whatever image you were looking at. Contact Tom at support@billiongraves.com and he will get this fixed for you.
We’re working on the Android app and we’ll get that out ASAP!
Thanks!
I too have had problems with the app, but hopefully it is fixed now. Last year I took over 15,000 pictures for the billiongraves website and found many problems with them. The slow responses back on fixing some of these problems are giving it a bad rap. Many people have gone back to Find-a-grave even though it is more time consuming. At least it is accurate. Too many times I would take pictures and link them and when I would get home and upload them not one would be linked. If I had only done 50 pictures that would be fine, but sometimes I had taken over 1000 pictures in an afternoon. I also noticed sometimes the picture shown and when you click on it to transcribe it a different picture shows up. If the quality of the information is not good it will not be trusted and others will go elsewhere to link their information.
Brian,
Thanks for the feedback. You probably experienced slow responses during the transition period to Otter Creek Holdings a few months ago. But now you can contact Tom at support@billiongraves.com and he will get back to you ASAP.
If you email Tom, he can do some troubleshooting as to why this happened to your images. We’re happy to fix whatever went wrong so this doesn’t happen again. With the transcribing error, has this happened recently? If so, let Tom know and we will get this fixed.
Thanks!
I sent a email from the “Contact Us” form on your website about specific problems and have not heard anything back on anything. That was like 2-3 weeks ago.
Brian
Brian, I’m not sure why you haven’t heard back on this. I wonder if it was lost somewhere or accidentally got sent to spam, but I sent this on to Tom at support@billiongraves.com and he will answer your questions. Let me know if you don’t hear back from him in the next couple of days. Thanks!
I second the concerns of the previous commenter. I would add that I have contacted the BillionGraves team with such problems in the past and have received extremely slow responses or sometimes none at all. For example, recently I have alerted them to the fact that one large cemetery close to where I live is mistakenly listed under the name of a smaller cemetery nearby. I want to take many photos in this larger cemetery, but I have no desire to add hundreds more under an erroneous label. So, I’ve avoided taking photos for now since the problem is still not resolved. I’m guessing that this is not an isolated occurrence.
Then, I have often wondered what happens to photos of gravestones that are (for whatever reason – crumbled stone or photo quality) unreadable and get reported or perpetually passed over by transcribers. BillionGraves say that they have a solution for this issue. What is it? And what effect does this have on future efforts to photograph such stones in their respective cemeteries? In other words, what if one person takes a shoddy image of a gravestone and this photo ends up in the transcribing queue, but a second person comes along and takes a readable photo of the same stone? Does the second get included in the queue along with the first? Does the second replace the first? Maybe it does, and maybe you have a system for this, but it would help us to know more about this issue before we spend time covering or recovering someone else’s ground.
On a related note, as a transcriber it takes me often half again as long to transcribe a certain number of grave photos on this website as necessary because I have to sift through scores of photos/graves I can’t read.
As for transcribing, at least one factor in doing so is a bit clumsy – the marriage date. Why should one have to fill it out twice for two people who are married? Why not incorporate the ability to link two people in terms of marriage and simply have the transcriber type the marriage date once for the both of them?
What would also make this site better is a running tally somewhere of how many total names have been indexed…so that hard-working contributors can get a sense of total progress in addition to individual progress.
BillionGraves is a neat site, but its developers/management have to exercise sharper maintenance if they want it to become the superior resource that they envision. As an effective tool it is now on about the same level as findagrave.com, given the problems presented by either site. But findagrave has the major jump on them in terms of total records and committed users. In order to draw more contributors, BillionGraves has to sharpen its game fast.
Thanks R. for your concerns. We are always looking for ways to improve the site, so we are definitely taking your suggestions into serious consideration.
As mentioned in my response to the previous comment, I will address these transcribing concerns in an upcoming blog post. I agree with you, there is always room for improvement in our photo-taking and transcribing process. Look for that post coming in the next month!
I apologize for any delay in customer service in the past, a possible explanation is that we were a little slow in responding during the transition period to Otter Creek Holdings. Now that that period is over, our Customer Support technician, Tom will be answering your support emails daily.
Lastly, the BillionGraves team agrees with you, we have a lot of things to sharpen up in the next couple months. But we are up to the challenge and are excited about the improvements we are working on. Thanks for your patience as we work hard to make BillionGraves bigger and better!
I think they are hiding how many pictures have been taken because they are embarased about the low number.
I agree with the poor pictures comment. The person who takes a less than readable picture should take notes and transcribe themselves if the stone is readable in person.
Also the cemeteries problem. I ran across one that put pictures in the wrong cemetery because the cemetery the picture were for did not exist. I had chosen some less than perfect reads and when to Find-A-Grave and found memorials with the information that allowed me to transcribe. That is when I noticed that the pictures were in two different cemeteries. GPS locations of billiongraves photo’s buts them in the Find-A-Grave cemetery (It had a map). I reported to billiongraves and not heard from them is they got it fixed.
David,
We are not embarrassed about our “low number” of images. In fact, we already have millions of records worldwide. We are announcing the exact number this week so keep an eye on our blog posts!
Again, better quality image records is our top priority and we will work on helping our volunteer users understand how to make the best possible records (including going home and transcribing the images personally if needed).
I’m not sure which cemetery you are referring to, but please send Tom (support@billiongraves.com) an email and let him know the error so we can get that fixed ASAP. Thanks!
I too have a similar issue on the other side.. the photographers that take pictures at terrible angles or sunshine glare or there is debris on the stone having where is so difficult to read.
Could there be a tutorial that you “have to do” before transcribing or taking pictures and maybe even redo every year or when there is major change in how things are done? Like agreeing to the terms and services check off?
Thank you
I agree! In transcribing images, I have found things that make transcribing difficult. I saw the need to update our transcribing tutorials (and publishing them on the site as well as the blog) which is what I’m working on now. Getting that information to our newer users will be a top priority as well. Thanks Kathie!
Liza,
Doing a bog piece on bad photos would be a good thing. I had starting saving bad pictures (flowers in front of dates, closeup of first name and only partial of sur-name). I never sent them in as it appeared that billiongraves had died (No answers from support, no blog postings for six months) If you would like the few samples I have saved, let me know an e-mail address and can send them
Hi David,
I have already started that blog and I also have been gathering examples of photos that will help people understand the importance of taking good pictures and what a good picture looks like. So we are on the same page! But if you already have some samples, I would love to look at what you have- they would help me out a lot! Send them straight to me: lisa@billiongraves.com
Thanks David!
Sometimes it is impossible to take readable pictures of gravestones because there is no contrast between the carved letters and the stone. Do your new partners know of some material (graphite, soot, etc.) that could be brushed over the letters to increase the contrast. It would have to be something that would wash off in the next rain so as not to deface the stone. I’ve taken pictures that I know won’t be readable, but I’m hoping someday that someone will recognize the stone and enter the information.
Other random comments adding to what various other people have said in this site:
* Many stones have only a first name on the stone. In many cases the family name is on another nearby stone, but the linkage may not have been established (or lost during the upload – another problem that MUST be fixed). Allow searches to be done on first name only. (It would have to be a pretty narrow search – a single cemetery or county.)
* Tell transcribers what to do if they find only a first name. I and many other transcribers enter “Unknown” for the surname, but there is no standard.
* In linked images if one or more image needs to be rotated and then we return to that image, it appears not to have been rotated. If I click on rotate again, it rotates it too far and I have to back up, which wastes a lot of time. If someone rotates an image, save that fact and always display the rotated image until someone changes it.
* Months ago I gave Tom a list of cemeteries that need correction. I’m still waiting before I take photos and have them assigned to the wrong name. Should I submit the list again, or will they be taken care of?
* In your instructions to transcribers, tell them if they can’t read the image, probably no one else can either. Have them report the image so it can be removed from the queue. Just about all we have left to transcribe seem to be unreadable, so get them out of the queue.
Like most of the other folks commenting on this blog, I really like the concept of BG. Over the past several months I’ve just about given up on you because nothing was happening. If you don’t get these problems fixed quickly a lot of loyal users will leave you and it will be almost impossible to get them back. Here’s hoping you do succeed.
Hi Lyle,
First of all THANK YOU for your feedback AND your contributions! We are always looking for ways to improve BillionGraves and feedback from users like you because we can’t catch everything. So we are very grateful for you bringing this to our attention.
We have been looking into what might help with improving the contrast on particularly old stones, but there’s a LOT of controversy about that. So we’re still trying to find something that works that also doesn’t damage the stone in any way. We’ll let you know when we have a solid, sure-fire answer.
As far as your transcribing comments, thank you for your feedback, I will definitely incorporate that into the tutorials I’m working on.
If you haven’t heard back from Tom on those cemeteries, I would send them again just to make sure those have been fixed. As mentioned earlier our customer support got a little behind in the transition to Otter Creek Holdings, so to be safe send that list again if you can.
Thank you for your loyalty during the months of transition. We’re very excited in the growth BillionGraves is experiencing, and you can trust that we will be working as quickly as we can to make all these much-needed improvements happen.
I’ve been a big fan and promoter of BillionGraves transcribing since we first heard about it in April. Many of us have found that it can be quite addictive! Just 5 minutes…. Just until I get a hard one….
Since June, I’ve been pleading for Transcribing Teams. We don’t need prizes; we don’t need competition – though they can be fun. We just want camaraderie. We want to see that our friends are doing transcribing too. We want to invite people to join something with us and watch our numbers grow. We want to improve on our own past performance. (February would be good – just ahead of our next Indexing Service Project!)
Other suggestions that were never addressed:
-when headstones are Reported, they are NOT removed from the queue. That is an extremely frustrating waste of time for Transcribers.
-the current method of navigating around the photo is primitive…having to scroll down, scroll across, then scroll down the page, then back up….! Please make it so we can just drag the photo into the correct position.
-I have transcribed the same headstone more than once. If it seems familiar I search for it, and there it is, already transcribed and searchable. And yet still in the queue. One stone I did THREE times. What’s going on?
And a few other questions….
What is the difference between Skip Image and Next? Do you need to have both?
Why not eliminate Add Description ? I conscientiously added every detail for hundreds of transcriptions before I realized what a waste of time that was. Whether people find the entries on this site or through FamilySearch, there is always a link to the photo – which will show them everything they need to know. We should only be transcribing searchable items.
Which brings me to children’s names on headstones….we should transcribe them the same as other names on the headstone, so they are searchable. What joy when a researcher looking for one of them finds them – with their siblings and parents – even if they’re not buried there. Am I wrong?
How do you want us to indicate unknown letters so that they are properly searchable? Sometimes we know it is a 7-letter name, but only 6 letters are readable and the other letter is not even guessable. I’m been doing Ache?on. Or would you prefer * or – or what?
Finally, when using Search to find a Person, choosing the surname Acheson and country Canada, a bunch pop up. If I click on one to view it, then go back….it keeps the Acheson, but loses the country. That’s really a pain.
I look forward to some changes – soon, I hope! And I just might start an Uploader Team too – if you get some Team structure in place!
Incidentally, the Eagle Scout plaque is a nice touch. Photos of headstones are not published until somebody transcribes them to make them searchable….
Lori,
Thank your for your wonderful feedback! I agree with you, as I’ve transcribed images myself, I have come across these same problems, and I’m going to bring them up with the BillionGraves team to see how we can implement your suggestions.
A couple things I can answer right now:
The “Next” and “Skip” buttons do the same thing, so you can use either one.
I agree, the current way of navigating around the transcribing image IS primitive. I have actually already brought this up with the BillionGraves team and that enhancement is about ready to be pushed out. So look forward to that coming soon!
When headstones are reported, they are removed from the queue. However, because you are still seeing them, there must be another problem as to why you are seeing those (e.g. there are duplicates of the image). Email support@billiongraves.com and we’ll see if we can figure out what’s going on here.
As far as the rest of your questions/suggestions, I will discuss them with the BillionGraves team and see what we can do to fix these! (I am also working on a transcribing blog post and I will also address these here, so keep your eye out for that!)
Thank you!
I really like the stat pages showing the number of photos taken from each geographical state/region each month. That’s neat, as are the lists of the top fifty contributors for photo-taking and transcribing. It really gives one a great sense from where and whom the project’s progress is issuing at a given time.
I have one other suggestion you might want to consider.
What about adding to each user’s individual profile lists that show the number of grave photos and transcriptions contributed by him or her from each state/region? For instance, I myself have transcribed over 10K grave photos for this site (only a small number in comparison to some contributors). It would be very neat to see the breakdown of that number (or at least future efforts) – how many did I do from Utah? England? France? New York? Etc. Etc.
Just an idea.
R.,
Thanks for the feedback, I think that’s a great idea! I’ll pass that on to the developers so see if we could do that!
Thanks!
Sorry, I meant to say 10K names, not photos.
Hi Lisa
I have just got done reading all these comments, being a long time computer person and many years involved with Family Search Indexing, I understand some of their frustrations, but I want to assure you that you are indeed doing all you can to help this fantastic program, and for you not to let these comments get you down. You have a heavy load and you can only do so much. Making these changes and trying to get all the bugs worked out takes a tremendous amount of time even with a large support team, when working with a complex computer program like this one, most of these people don’t have any idea what is involved in trying to correct these problems. Frankly I am quite pleased with the progress so far and am surprised that there are not more bugs to work out. Please don’t get discouraged, keep up all the good work you are doing. You have my full support and I would never drop Billion Graves and go over to Find-a-grave just because there are issues that need to be fixed. Good luck and keep on doing a good job.
Thanks for all you do to move this great work forward.
Sincerely, Bob
Bob,
Thanks so much! It really does take a lot of work to make these changes and keep caught up on everything. There’s only so much time in the day, you know? So yes, we’re doing it as fast as we possibly can.
Thank you for your understanding and dedication. We so appreciate you!
I love the Leaderboard and map too. But you really need to fix Canada.
The map shows one country, like Australia. But the numbers are listed for each province, like each US state. (Plus some oddly named non-province that is not known to anyone!) So Canada never shows any colour!
Either count all Canada uploads as one country, or draw in the provinces.
Thanks Lori, we’ll take a look at that!
I’d love to be able to choose to continue transcribing a group of photos from a single location. Many times, there are regional or local traditions in markings or placement of dates, etc that are easier to be consistent in transcribing. Also, I’d really like to be able to do transcribing on my Android in an offline manner — without incurring data charges. It’s a great activity to do in the few minutes while waiting at a doctor’s appointment, or between meetings.
I’d love to be able to view a cemetery map showing which rows need to have photos taken, and which are waiting to be transcribed — I hate duplicating efforts.
Pam,
You CAN transcribe photos from a single location! At the bottom of the transcribing page, it has two options for narrowing your transcribing queue: by Country and by Cemetery. Click on the blue words: either “All Countries” or “All Cemeteries” and it will bring up a box that you can pick which country and/or cemetery.
I’ll send on your other ideas to our developers. Thank you for the suggestions!
I have been transcribing for a few months now and am almost addicted to it. Last month I transcribed over 24,000 names.
I do have one suggestion: When transcribing, I always check the names before I hit the “next” button. Sometimes I spot a correction that needs to be made right as I click on “next” and it’s too late to fix it.
If we had the ability to go to the previous transcription or to review the past few records we had transcribed, it would really be helpful.
Diana,
WOW! That’s amazing! Thanks for all your hard work and all the time you spend! That is truly fantastic!
I will pass this word along to our developers. It’s a great suggestion, we’ll see what we can do to incorporate that. Thanks!
Has BillionBraves discussed releasing its metadata under an open license, such as one of the Open Data Commons licenses? http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/
I was encouraged to see the partnership with Ancestry and increased cooperation with FamilySearch, but hope that the company is interested in making the metadata openly accessible and reusable on the web since gravestone data is in the public domain.
Cheers!