Google Your GenealogyMarch 9, 2012

What is Google?

Google is a popular web search engine—

And learning techniques saves time and results in rewarding research.

How? A Search engine scans web pages to find

instances of the keywords in sites that creates an index of the world web.

WWW is critical when using Google for genealogy No . . . not World Wide Web WHO are we searching for WHERE did they live, work, travel, etc. WHEN did the event take place and WHAT type of data are you seeking Vital Records, Census, Passenger Lists, etc.

Google SEARCH Strings

Google SEARCH Strings

Google is *not* case sensitive (two exceptions are AND and OR): GENEALOGY is the same as genealogy is the same as Genealogy is the same as gEnEaLoGy is the same as GeNeAlOgY (96 million results and counting . .

.)

Google SEARCH Strings

Google uses an ‘automatic AND’ (also called an ‘implied AND’) between multiple keyword queries

Common words (also called ‘Stop Words’) are generally ignored by Google (a, of, the, and, or, not, to, how, if, where, how, etc.) This has changed over time – these words

don’t generally provide enough meaningful difference to results, but do tend to slow down overall response time

Google SEARCH Strings

A simple search starts by typing into the search box and hitting the 'Enter’.

Choosing the right search terms is the key to finding the information you need. Try alternates;

Use a research log to remember what you tried.

Google Simple search

Google SEARCH Strings

Google and most other search engines perform special actions when using reserved terms or Boolean operators: AND (when typed in upper case) requires

presence of both terms on results pages (but no proximity required)

Syntax: Busby genealogy AND Alabama OR (when typed in upper case) allows

for either of multiple conditions Syntax: ditoto OR ditota campobasso

Google SEARCH Strings

Search at the same time for the three ways names are entered: “George Washington” OR “Washington

George” OR “George * Washington”

Adding quotations around the phrase requires resulting pages to include all keywords in the exact order specified in the query. This narrows results.

Google SEARCH Strings

Wildcard *The placement of a single asterisk serves as a wildcard that instructs Google to accept any character or consecutive string of characters in place of the asterisk.

Google SEARCH Strings

Special Symbols for Filtering Results Minus sign (-) acts as the word NOT as an

operator (though NOT isn’t actually supported by Google as an operator – go figure?)

Tilde (~) processes immediately following term along with similar words having same or similar meanings ~genealogy will yield results including terms

such as: ancestry, family, family history, family tree, genealogical, genealogists, roots, surname, tree, vital records, and others…

Plus + is an essential word. These all need a space before the symbol.

Google SEARCH Strings

Numrange searches for results containing numbers in a given range. Just add two numbers, separated by two periods, with no spaces, into the search box along with your search terms. You can use Numrange to set ranges for everything such as dates (“Ellis Williams” 1950..1960)

Google Advanced Search