First let me say that I know Ancestry takes a lot of hits on these boards but I for one am very satisfied with Ancestry.com and absolutely feel that I am getting my money's worth from the site; that being said I have some suggestions.

Wildcards - Lets assume I'm searching for J. Smith. Putting J* in the first name box and Ancestry tells me that there are too many matches. Leave it blank and it shows me EVERY Smith from A to Z. Why is this? How is saying "show me only those whose first name begins with J" going to return MORE results than saying show me everyone from A thru Z? (i.e. blank first name)?

Exact Matches Only - you should be able to limit this to specific fields and not the whole search. Why can't I limit the search to only county Cork? Why does exact match have to be for all fields?

Search Results - why can't I sort the results on any one of the fields listed?

You Have The Data Let Me Search It - often times search results show fields other than those you can search on. Why can't I search all available fields for any given collection?

Exclude Collections - Should have the ability to exclude certain collections. I don't really want to have to scroll through a thousand city directory records. Would seem a simple matter of showing a list of available collections and marking which ones I want to show up in the search results.

Again, a satisfied customer here - just some things I would like to see in any future site update.