Be Flexible With Ages
You don’t have to have followed many people through the censuses to realise that they can be an imprecise tool for calculating year of birth. However, even if you select to search five years either side of your expected year of birth, you may still be missing your ancestor. People have always been happy to lie about their age, especially as they get older. Remember as well that someone who is recorded as 30 in 1841 could have been 34, because ages over 15 were rounded down to the nearest five years. Also, just as with names, ages can fall foul of transcription errors. I had one 76-year-old ancestor who was recorded in the transcription as 16! It was only when I completely removed the year of birth from the search that her record appeared.