genealogy searches on google
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Learning to Use Google More Effectively
Today’s Slides are available at:
http://www.eogn.com/handouts/google
Google's mission statement
• “Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Google users can:
• search through more than 25 billion web pages (www.worldwidewebsize.com ) compared to 9 billion on Bing and 12 billion on Yahoo
• search through approximately 10 billion images (www.webpronews.com)
• Read millions of messages
If printed:
• the pages being indexed would result in a stack more than 1,000 miles high.
So how does Google make money?
Google’s Motto
Don’t be evil
Basic Concepts
• static web pages
• dynamic web pages
Google Searches
• Google will find most of the information that you and I post on the web, along with more information published by tens of thousands of other individuals and societies.
• Google will not find the information stored within the databases of the big sites: Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org and others.
Google searches by words
• Boolean logic
• Upper/lower case is ignored
• “Trivial words” are ignored: I, a, the, of, etc.
Boolean AND is Assumed
A search of: John Smith Denver Colorado
Is the same as: John AND Smith AND Denver AND Colorado
This can be changed by specifying Boolean terms
• "John Smith" AND "Denver, Colorado" (the AND may be omitted)
• This search will return results that contain both phrases
Other Boolean searches can help
• (John OR William) AND Smith AND Denver AND (Colorado OR CO)
John Smith of Denver, CO
John Smith in Denver, Colorado
William Smith Colorado Mining Company in Denver, Texas
Genealogy challenges
• A search for Washington Harvey Eastman
• Will produce many “hits” relating to photography in Washington, DC as well as references to many people named Harvey or Washington!
Genealogy challenges
• A search for “Washington Harvey Eastman” (with the quote marks)
• Will not produce references to:– Washington H. Eastman– Washington Eastman– W. H. Eastman
Etc.
Genealogy challenges
You can use a minus sign, meaning “NOT”
A search for: Washington Harvey Eastman –Kodak
Should eliminate most references to photography
Google’s Special Syntaxes
• site:– Allows you to narrow the search by a site
or a top-level domain• Examples:
– familysearch.org– Ancestry.com– edu
Google’s Special Syntaxes
• link:– Returns a list of pages that link to the
specified URL• Example:
link:http://www.eogn.com
Google’s Special Syntaxes
• intitle:– Restricts your search to the titles of Web
pages• Example:
intitle:”george bush”
Google’s Special Syntaxes
• inurl:– Restricts your search to the URLs of web
pages• Example:
inurl:help
Will return: http://www.eogn.com/helpfile.html
Google’s Special Syntaxes
• intext:– Searches only the body text, ignoring link
text, URLs and titles.
Google’s Special Syntaxes
• cache:– Finds a copy of a web page that Google
indexed even if that page is no longer available today or has since changed its contents.
• Example:cache:www.eogn.com
Isle of Clett
Isle of Clett
Google’s Special Syntaxes
• daterange:– Limits your date to a particular date or
range of dates that a page was indexed.
– Note #1: It is the date that the page was INDEXED by Google, not the page CREATION date!
– Note #2: Date format must be in Julian dates
Google’s Special Syntaxes
• filetype:– May specify to search only for PDF, Word
(DOC), PowerPoint (PPT), Excel (XLS) or other file types.
Google’s Special Syntaxes
• info:– Provides a page of links to more
information about a specified URL
Google’s Special Syntaxes
Advanced Search
• Query Word Input
• Language
• Filtering
• File Format
• Date
Advanced Search
Advanced Search
Setting Preferences
• Language
• Filtering
• Number of Results
• Results Window
Setting Preferences
Google Books
Google Books
Google Books
Google Books
Need more information?
http://www.google.com/help
Need still more information?
What Will Google Do Next?
http://www.eogn.com
Today’s Slides are available at:
http://www.eogn.com/handouts/google