The popular UK family history site Findmypast.com unveiled its brand new version of the 1901 census today with a retranscribed index to offer "more accurate transcriptions" than other sites offering the 1901 census online. The new census index includes all of the great search fields offered at other online 1901 census sites, such as occupation and place and year of birth. You can also narrow your search with the name of another occupant of the same household. An additional search feature added for the 1901 census, as well as all other censuses available at FindMyPast.com, is the option to order search results by name or birth year.

Wonder of wonders, they've kicked off the launch with the two counties where the bulk of my research takes place - Somersetshire and Gloucestershire. How often does that happen? Records for additional counties will be added soon, with Cornwall, Durham, Glamorganshire, Norfolk, Northumberland, Middlesex and Yorkshire next in line.

The 1901 British census is also online at the UK National Archives and Ancestry.co.uk, so if you've already found your ancestors in the 1901 census on one of those sites, you probably won't learn anything new from FindMyPast's version (although their image quality is excellent). But if you've had trouble locating an individual in the past, the new index might just make the difference.