| Genealogy-Geneology.net | Selected Sites | Selected Directories | Free E-book |
Searching The Web
Many people who are starting their online genealogy journey go to their favorite search engine and type their family surname into the search field. They are then usually greeted with thousands of pages that all contain their surname. Most researchers would not have the time or patience to sift through 300,000 or more individual web pages.
Since a search engine does not discriminate between genealogy related and non-genealogy related web pages, a search engine will retrieve web pages that contain webmaster and company names that are the same as the surname typed into the search field. You will also find web pages containing membership lists and company staff lists.
So how do you go about finding the pages you are looking for?
There are a number of ways you can eliminate the unwanted, unrelated pages from your searches. The easiest way to search for genealogy-related sites is to use human compiled geneology directories. By using directories or "portals" you are only searching sites that are related to genealogy.
You can also use certain techniques (discussed later), that can help eliminate unrelated pages when using standard search engines. These techniques will help save you enormous amounts of time that would have been spent sorting through thousands of unrelated web pages.
Genealogy Directories
Genealogy directories are an excellent place to start if you are looking for information relating to a topic such as genealogy software, civil war records or census records. Just about any topic you can think of is covered by the good directories.
Since directories do not contain all the genealogy pages on the web, they have a more limited use if you want information on a specific surname. However, they will lead you to databases and lists which may provide you with the information you are seeking.
Good genealogy directories include:
This site would easily be one of the best genealogy directories on the net. Look down the left hand side for links to resources, tips and articles on every genealogy topic imaginable. Be sure to check out "Beginners Corner".
This well known geneology directory is one of the largest and most extensive on the net. You can search by topic or view an alphabetical index. If you do not know which category your topic is listed in you can use the search function.
This directory is well worth a visit. You can also obtain a free email account.
This is the largest genealogy directory with more than 180,000 geneology and surname listings. The "gateways" provide selected links to family tree resources worldwide. Each gateway covers a specific topic such as "USA Gateway", "Beginner Gateway" and "Military Gateway". Each gateway also contains links to surname home pages and forums.
Family Tree Maker (the well known family tree software maker) offers numerous links to pages within it's own site that cover such things as beginner lessons, surname searches, and how-to guides. This site is excellent for beginners.
You can take advantage of their 14-day free trial to search over 1 billion names from the
best databases available on the net.
Like ancestry.com and family tree maker, this commercial site has numerous links to helpful articles and lessons. Make sure you visit the "Learning Center".
Genealogy Specific Search Engines
As well as genealogy directories, you can search genealogy specific search engines. These operate in the same way as standard search engines, except that they allow you to search genealogical sites exclusively. This eliminates the non-geneology sites that would normally be retrieved in your search results because something on one of the pages matches your search term. Genealogy-specific search engines allow you to search for only those sites which are related to genealogy.
When using a geneology specific search engine keep in mind that including the word "genealogy" in the search field will not help your search results as the search engine is only going to searching genealogy-related sites anyway.
Two good genealogy-specific search engines are:
(To find the Genealogy Toolbox search engine you need to scroll until you see a search box labelled number three.)
Genealogy specific search engines are great tools for finding family history Web pages, but they are only as good as the pages that are submitted to them. This means there are practically millions of pages that are not contained in these specialized search engines.
Using a Search Engine Effectively
Sometimes directories and genealogy specific search engines are just not going to provide you with the information you need. That is where the major search engines come in. Search engines such as "Google", "Alta Vista", "Excite", and "AlltheWeb" use electronic spiders to index billions of web pages then rank them according to how relevant they are to the "keywords" you type in to the search box.
However (as discussed previously), typing in your surname by itself means being presented with an often unsurmountable list of pages, the majority of which are of no use to you.
I am now going to show you a few tricks which will allow you to substantially narrow the quantity of search results retrieved.
"+" and "-" symbols
Using "+" and "-" signs in front of your keywords is a useful technique supported by most major search engines. By adding a "+" in front of a keyword you are telling the search engine that you are searching for pages which contain all of the keywords you have entered i.e. +Wagner +Nicholas.
If I searched only for "Wagner", the search engine would return any page that contained the name "Wagner".
By simply telling the search engine that I want only pages returned that also contain the name "Nicholas", I will substantially improve the quality of my search results.
Using the "-" sign allows you to search for pages that have one word on them but not another word. This is useful if you share a surname with a well known celebrity. For example if your surname was "Cruise", entering Cruise -Tom into the search field would be a good idea.
You could extend this even further by entering +FirstName +Cruise -Tom -Nicole -Kidman. This will tell the search engine to exclude any page that mentions Tom Cruise and his now ex-wife Nicole Kidman.
Phrase Searching
While using "+" and "-" symbols is a useful technique, it is not so useful when searching family sites that contain pedigree information in large databases. There are often so many names in these databases that all the names you are searching for are likely to be found. For example, if you search for +Pat +Bishop, it is likely the database contains "Pat Stockwell" and "Sam Bishop". Thus even if "Pat Bishop" is not in the database your search will still retrieve unwanted results. This is where "Phrase Searching" comes in handy.
Phrase searching is a technique that tells a search engine to find pages that contain words in the exact order that you specify. This is done by enclosing your keywords in speech marks i.e. "Nicholas Wagner".
The search engine will view two words enclosed in speech marks as one search term and will only return pages that contain the name "Nicholas Wagner" etc, as a phrase where the two words are next to each other. The main problem with this technique is that any page that lists the surname first, i.e. Wagner, Nicholas will be excluded.
Phrase searching is supported by most of the major search engines.
Tip: Combine the "+" and "-" techniques with the phrase searching technique i.e. "+Wagner +Nicholas". To demonstrate how effective this technique can be I entered +Wagner +Nicholas without quotation marks into the google.com search engine and received 83,000 results. I then entered "+Wagner +Nicholas" and received 235 results!
Wild Cards
A wild card search allows a searcher to enter a character (*) to search for plurals of a word or variations in spelling.
For example, if you search the surname Sims, you can also search for the singular Sim. The wild card search would be: Sim*
This would return all matches for Sim and Sims.
The major search engines which currently support wild card searches are "Alta Vista", "AOL Search", "HotBot", "MSN Search", and "Yahoo".
Refining your search
Include Given Names
By searching for given names alongside surnames, you will help to substantially focus the search. This will increase the chances of finding a site with highly relevant information. Remember the "+" "-" and phrase searching techniques for even better results.
Include Place Names
If you know where your ancestors came from, you should include this information in your search .i.e. +Trump +New +York. This dramatically increases your chances of finding sites with relevant information.
Search for uncommon names
If a keyword is uncommon, it is likely to return significantly less web pages than a common keyword. Thus if your family tree contains an uncommon surname you should try a search on it.