Today it is not uncommon for you to Google someone’s name when you want to know more about them. From that nice woman you met at the park who has kids the same age as yours to the young man that your teenage daughter wants to go out with this Friday night, you can find details about just about anyone by doing a Google search for their name. In fact, some people Google their own names regularly to see what information about them is “out there” for all to see – reputation management, if you will. With all of this Googling going on, you may wonder whether you can use Google to help you with your family history research.
One of the important things to know about using Google in family history research is how to craft your search query correctly. By unnecessarily narrowing your search by putting in words that may not appear in some of the documents that you want, you might miss those documents even if they are out there and available to you. Try something general, like a name and location or the name of a database where you think the records may be located, like “1910 Census”.
You can also “tell” Google to keep certain things out of your search results. For example, some surnames like Bird or Flint are also nouns. If I were a Bird looking for my ancestors, I would keep all ornithology-related information out of my search by adding words to my query that let Google know what search results I want. For example, I might search for “Bird family” or “Bird surname” to get relevant information. An alternative way to keep out unwanted information is to exclude words by searching for something like “Bird –animal”. The minus sign directly preceding the word “animal” lets Google know that I am not interested in results that contain information about animals.
These are just a few tips to get you started with Google research for genealogy. If you do not find what you are looking for on your first couple of queries, do not despair. Keep trying different combinations of words, spellings, date ranges, record names, and so on. Your diligent searching just might turn up clues that you otherwise may not have been able to find.
Photo by jdurham on morguefile.com.