I've been testing the United States 1950 census at the NATIONAL ARCHIVES WEBSITE. Yesterday I also went to FamilySearch and to Ancestry TM to see what is happening with the 1950 census there.
The NARA site activated at one in the morning on April 1st. During Covid closures the employees of the National Archives were busy working on this census to meet the commitment to release it on that date. Artificial Intelligence was used to 'read' the handwriting and come up with a searchable text. As is the case with FamilySearch and Ancestry, users are allowed to tweak the database- - for better or worse. A huge amount of trust in the good will and best efforts of the public are expected. Both companies as well as the National Archives have put a shout out for volunteers.
I came up with a list of the most important people I wanted to find on the 1950. The NARA database allows you to search by first/given name, last/surname, both, and to also enter an ED district. You may also put in a STATE, COUNTY, and/or CITY, which narrows the search a bit more.
Of about 20 names I sought, the most important did come right up. I guess that's a blessing.
However from that point on I was searching for people who were either not counted or who otherwise will require a longer period of time to find. You see, I'm moving forward in time, looking for those who descended from a branch of my Hungarian immigrant family who may have married, joined the service during World War II, and settled outside the ethnic enclave that they lived in for a generation or maybe two as part of that expansion to suburbs as well as post-service immigration within the United States. I have no way of knowing if they will be in the same state and some of the surname just bring up so many people.
Eventually FamilySearch and Ancestry - as well as some other genealogy databases - will catch up in their efforts to index. What will make it all easier on us is that these databases will allow us to further narrow by allowing us to imput a date of birth.
An example from my own research is a distant relative named Katherine or Catherine or Kay, as she was called. As of 1940, she had been diagnosed with TB and had no say in being put into a TB Hospital. I have never found her on the 1940 and I don't know if that is because she was not counted, or if she was put in a hospital outside the city and state where she lived until that diagnosis or if perhaps her surname was misspelled. Over the years I've periodically rechecked research.
I know that she was alive in 1950, and that she died not long after that, of the flu complicated by the TB which had been resolved, but which had caused considerable damage to her lungs. When her surname did not bring her up on the NARA site, I decided to see how many hits it would bring up If I simply put her first name and the state.... many thousands.
Importantly, I found the family that she lived with at some point when she was well enough to leave the hospital, and she was not there.
The 1950 Census has some special features that the others do not, and you can check the site to learn about the Native American (Indian) census, how college students away from home were counted, and about the census of Guam and Panama.
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