<A
HREF="http://genealogy.about.com/library/print/n052902a.htm">...
I thought this may be helpful to new researchers and to old researchers who
are not as familiar with computer search techniques!
Googling Genealogy Style
Twelve Google Search Tips for Genealogists
By <A
HREF="http://genealogy.about.com/mbiopage.htm">Kimberly
Powell</A>
In just three short years, Google has become the search engine of choice for
millions of savvy Internet searchers. It is a special favorite among many of
the genealogists I know, due to its ability to return relevant search results
for genealogy and surname queries. Google is much more than just a tool for
finding Web sites, however, and most people surfing for information on their
ancestors barely scratch the surface of its full potential. If you know what
you are doing, you can use Google to search within Web sites, locate photos
of your ancestors, bring back dead sites, and track down missing relatives.
Learn how to Google as you've never Googled before:
1) Search With a Focus
Google has four important ground rules that you need to know for focused
results:
Use a plus sign before words which are absolutely critical to your search.
Use a minus sign before words that you want to be excluded from the search.
This is especially useful when searching for a surname with a common usage
such as rice or one which is shared with a famous celebrity such as Harrison
Ford (i.e. you would enter your search as ford -Harrison to exclude results
with the word 'Harrison').
Use quotation marks around any two word or greater phrase to find results
where the words appear together exactly as you have entered them. This is
especially useful when searching for proper names (i.e. a search for thomas
jefferson will bring up pages with thomas smith and bill jefferson, while
searching for "thomas jefferson" will only bring up pages with the name
thomas jefferson included as a phrase.
Use OR to retrieve search results that match any one of a number of words.
The default operation for Google is to return results that match ALL search
terms, so by linking your terms with OR you can achieve a bit more
flexibility (ie smith genealogy OR geneology OR cemetery) To get really fancy
you can combine these options together to achieve truly focused search
results. For example, crisp +surname -apple genealogy OR geneology OR +will
OR "family tree" will return sites with the terms smith AND surname, combined
with either genealogy, geneology, will, or the phrase family tree. Plus you
won't retrieve any pages talking about "apple crisp!" I only recommend
limiting your searches to this extent for common surnames, however. Otherwise
you may just find yourself missing some good sites!
2) Search Without Stops
Stop words are small, common words that many search engines ignore, or don't
stop for, when searching for documents that match your query. This is because
these words are either too common to generate meaningful results (i.e. where,
how, about... or are parts of speech like conjunctions, prepositions and
adverbs (i.e. and, if, be, the...). Google tells you when it's ignoring a
stop word by displaying details on the results page below the search box
(i.e. "about" is a very common word and was not included in your search).
There are times when searching that you will not want Google to exclude these
stop words. For example, will is considered a stop word by Google, which can
mess up your search results if you are searching for the will of a specific
ancestor. To get around this you can either force Google to include a stop
word in your search by putting a "+" sign in front of it or by enclosing your
phrase of two or more words in quotation marks (i.e. "about genealogy" or
"will rogers").
3) Search Suggested Alternate Spellings
Google has become one smart cookie and now suggests alternate spellings for
search terms which appear to be misspelled. The search engine's self-learning
algorithm automatically detects misspellings and suggests corrections based
on the most popular spelling of the word. You can get a basic idea of how it
works by typing in 'geneology' as a search term. While Google will return
search results for pages on geneology, it will also ask you "Did you mean
genealogy?" Click on the suggested alternate spelling for a whole new list of
sites to browse! This feature comes in particularly handy when searching for
cities and towns for which you aren't sure of the correct spelling. Type in
Bremehaven and Google will ask you if you meant Bremerhaven. Or type in
Napels Italy, and Google will ask you if you meant Naples Italy.
4) Bring Sites Back From the Dead
How many times have you found what looks to be a very promising Web site,
only to get a "File Not Found" error when clicking on the link? Genealogical
Web sites seem to come and go every day as webmasters change file names,
switch ISPs, or just decide to remove the site because they can no longer
afford to maintain it. This doesn't mean the information is always gone
forever, however. Hit the Back button and look for a link to a "cached" copy
at the end of the Google description and page URL. Clicking on the "cached"
link should bring up a copy of the page as it appeared at the time that
Google indexed that page, with your search terms highlighted in yellow. You
can also return Google's cached copy of a page, by preceding the page's URL
with 'cache:'. If you follow the URL with a space separated list of search
words, they will be highlighted on the returned page. For example:
cache:genealogy.about.com surname will return the cached version of this
site's homepage with the term surname highlighted in yellow.
5) Find Related Sites
Found a site that you really like and want more? GoogleScout can help you
find sites with similar content. Hit the Back button to return to your Google
search results page and then click on the Similar Pages link. This will take
you to a new page of search results with links to pages which contain similar
content. The more specialized pages (such as a page for a specific surname)
may not turn up many relevant results, but if you are researching a
particular topic (i.e. adoption or immigration), GoogleScout can help you
find a large number of resources very quickly, without having to worry about
selecting the right keywords. You can also access this feature directly by
using the related command with the URL of the site that you like (
related:genealogy.about.com).
6) Follow the Trail
Once you've found a valuable site, chances are that some of the sites which
link to it may also be beneficial to you. Use the link command along with a
URL to find pages which contain links pointing to that URL. Enter
link:genealogy.about.com and you'll find about 3,200 pages which link to the
homepage of
genealogy.about.com. You can also use this technique to find out
who, if anyone, has linked to your personal genealogy site.
7) Search Within a Site
While many major sites have search boxes, this isn't always true of smaller,
personal genealogy sites. Google comes to the rescue again, however, by
allowing you to restrict search results to a specific site. Just enter your
search term followed by the site command and the main URL for the site you
wish to search in the Google search box on the main Google page. For example,
military
site:www.familytreemagazine.com pulls up 150+ pages with the search
term 'military' on the Family Tree Magazine Web site. This trick is
especially useful for quickly finding surname information on genealogy sites
without indexes or search capabilities.
8) Cover Your Bases
When you really want to make sure you haven't missed a good genealogy site,
enter allinurl:genealogy to return a list of sites with genealogy as part of
their URL (can you believe that Google found more than 10 million?). As you
can tell from this example, this is a better option to use for more focused
searches, such as surnames or locality searches. You can combine multiple
search terms, or use other operators such as OR to help focus your search
(i.e. allinurl:genealogy france OR french). A similar command is also
available to search for terms contained within a title (i.e.
allintitle:genealogy france OR french).
9) Find People, Maps and More
If you're searching for U.S. information, Google can do so much more than
just search Web pages. The lookup information they provide through their
search box has been expanded to include street maps, street addresses, and
phone numbers. Enter a first and last name, city, and state to find a phone
number. You can also do a reverse lookup by entering a phone number to find a
street address. To use Google to find street maps, just enter a street
address, city, and state (i.e. 8601 Adelphi Road College Park MD), in the
Google search box. You can also find business listings by entering the name
of a business and its location or zip code (i.e.
myfamily.com utah).
10) Pictures from the Past
Google's image search feature makes it easy to locate photos on the Web. Just
click on the Images tab on Google's home page and type in a keyword or two to
view a results page full of image thumbnails. To find photos of specific
people try putting their first and last names within quotes (i.e. "laura
ingalls wilder"). If you've got a bit more time or a more unusual surname,
then just entering the surname should be enough. This feature is also a great
way to find photos of old buildings, tombstones, and even your ancestor's
hometown. Because Google doesn't crawl for images as often as it does for Web
pages, you may find many pages/images have moved. If the page doesn't come up
when you click on the thumbnail, then you may be able to find it by copying
the URL from below the feature, pasting it into the Google search box, and
using the "cache" feature.
11) Glancing Through Google Groups
If you've got a bit of time on your hands, then check out the Google Groups
search tab available from the Google home page. Find info on your surname, or
learn from the questions of others by searching through an archive of over
700 million Usenet newsgroup messages going back as far as 1981. If you've
got even more time on your hands, then check out this <A
HREF="http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://...
Usenet
timeline</A> for a fascinating diversion.
12) Narrow Your Search by File Type
Typically when you search the Web for information you expect to pull up
traditional Web pages in the form of HTML files. Google offers results in a
variety of different formats, however, including .PDF (Adobe Portable
Document Format), .DOC (Microsoft Word), .PS (Adobe Postscript), and .XLS
(Microsoft Excel). These files appear among your regular search results
listings where you can either view them in their original format, or use the
View as HTML link (good for when you don't have the application that is
needed for that particular file type, or for when computer viruses are a
concern). You can also use the filetype command to narrow your search to find
documents in particular formats (i.e. filetype:xls genealogy forms). You
aren't likely to use this Google feature often, but I have used it to find
genealogy brochures in PDF format and family group sheets and other genealogy
forms in Microsoft Excel format.
If you're someone like me who uses Google quite a bit, then you may want to
consider downloading and using the <A
HREF="http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://...
Toolbar</A> (requires Internet Explorer
Version 5 or later and Microsoft Windows 95 or later). When the Google
Toolbar is installed, it automatically appears along with the Internet
Explorer toolbar and makes it easy to use Google to search from any Web site
location, without returning to the Google home page to begin another search.
A variety of buttons and a drop-down menu make it easy to perform all of the
searches described in this article with just a click or two.
If you still aren't successful in your search after trying these tips, Google
provides one more option - a new service known as <A
HREF="http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=https:/...
Answers</A> which allows
you to ask a question and set the price you are willing to pay for an answer.
A Google Answers Researcher will search for the answer and send you the
information you're seeking, as well as useful links to Web pages on the
topic. If you're satisfied with that answer, you pay the amount you
specified. If not, then you may petition for a full refund.
Best wishes for a successful search!
Related Resources:
Surfing Genealogy Style
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Finding Your Brick Wall Ancestors
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Translating Genealogy Web Sites on the Fly
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Historical Usenet Timeline
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HREF="http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://...
Google Toolbar
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Google Answers
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HREF="http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=https:/...
Google
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HREF="http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://...