Using Google as Your Search Engine for Genealogy

As far as I'm concern Google is the excellent, number one search engine on this planet. Now don't get me wrong there are a number of great search engine out there but if you are a genealogist then Google should be your choice. It isn't just your everyday run of the mill search engine. Google has the ability to get directly to the point of your genealogy search but most people don't take the time to fully explore what Google has to offer and learn how to use them; they only skim the surface. Well let's get right down and dirt, as they say, right into the middle of Google so your genealogy search results are more accurate and self rewarding.

I am going to talk directly about genealogy research but you can use these tools for any other type of research you are working on. In some of the examples I will use my family name.

These first 3 basic steps that follow are just the skim of the surface when people use Google

1. When you are looking for two or more words that are an exact phrase or sentence you will want to use quotation marks around the words such as "de Warenne." this type of search will display only hits that include this exact phrase and no more. If you didn't use quotation marks you would have hits that only included de and Warenne. You could end up with millions of hits to search through and you don't want that.

2. Here is two very easy thing to do: When you are searching for one word in particular that is important to your research, add a plus sign at the beginning of the word, like +Warenne also if you are searching for a surname that is common like Warren, put a minus sign before the word so it would be excluded in the search results, for example: Warren-William.

3. If you have a couple of phrases that go together like William de Warenne and William the Conquer, you can link these together with the word OR so Google will match all search terms like this: William de Warenne OR William the Conquer.

These three examples I have given you are the most common searches that people will perform because that is all the future they have dug into Google. Now let's go further.

Once you have found a site that look like it might be promising, let's see how to find what you are looking for within that particular site.

Now every time you open up a site it might contain a search box and it might not. If it doesn't yes, you can go to edit, find within this site and search for a word but there is a better way of doing this. In the main Google page search box you can enter a word or phrase that you want to search for plus the main URL of the site. This will tell you how many search result for that particular word or phrase you are looking for. For example: William de Warenne www.genealogy.com, this brought up 8 hits dealing this topic. You can use any word or phrase you would like not just a surname.

One good thing about Google is that it always detects a miss spelled word automatically for you. If you type in Warennne, Google will ask you "do you mean: Warenne." Now you don't have to click on the correct spelling that Google suggests because it will bring up hits with the exact spelling that you entered for the search but if you do you will have a brand new list of search hits. If you haven't noticed this try it, you will be amazed at the different results you will have.

There is another thing that Google does automatically and that is disregards little words like, of, and, about, etc. These little words are just not important enough to make a factor at least that is what Google thinks. So what if you know you just have to have these words included in your search? All you have to add is a plus sign in front of the word that you don't want Google to leave out or for an exact phrase, put quotes around the phrase. Google will respond to your request.

There are several search engines out there that can give you a big head ache. Let's say you are search for a particular individual in a particular city in the United States and your search results total five hits. So you start your research by opening each one up only to discover that your computer will open only 2 out of all five. This is because your computer doesn't support those particular programs. This happens a lot with older computers. You will not have this problem with Google. For every search result Google will list different formats for you so you can open about any search result you want.

I know that everyone out there has had this happen to you. You are doing a search for a particular person and you come across a site that you think just might have the information you are looking for. You go to open it and you get this splashed in front of your face," File Not found." I hate when this happens, get frustrated and don't understand why people have either moved their site without a direct link to the new one or have banded it al together. There is a way of trying to locate the lost site. All you have to do is go back to the previous page, Google search results, and click on the word "cached" link. It should be located underneath the main site URL address. You will come up with the page information that was put on the site in the beginning.

There is another handy little clever tool and that is the "similar pages" link that is also listed right beside the "cached" link. Click on that and you will come up with a list of new sites that have a similar topic to the topic you are researching.

These are just a few of the handy little tools that Google offers; there are many more. If you haven't used these tools, try them out the next time you are working on your family or a client's family research. They do come in handy and are a time saver.