The search functionality in, for example, treeview is working fascinatingly bad for me. The treeview, already being the worst Geni view to navigate, no offense ;-)
I believe that the display names are not searched, which is a big shortcoming as calling names are often only in the display name.
As an example: I am search for Theo or (Theo)
where I have someone with a display name of
T.L. (Theo) Donkers
That profile does not come out, while it is clearly the best match for "(Theo)".
The display name is not searched but the AKA field is, so put Theo in the AKA field.
Also keep in mind the name settings https://www.geni.com/account_settings/name_preferences, not all users use the same settings
I could, but I found the Geni editing system so enormously slow and circumvential that I only enter the display name so that at least I can *see* the calling name.
My new strategy is that I resorted to importing GEDCOM from my own editing system. I intend to make a script to convert this GEDCOM indeed to add calling names to the display names AND as a AKA name, I just need to figure out how to import the disaply names from GEDCOM. This might require another feature request ;-)