Beginning about two blog posts back from this current one we have been diving into how to begin your genealogical research. Previously we have covered recommended first steps and organizational tactics that will help you compile and store information about your individual relatives Today I hope to continue our blog post series on genealogical research and help you take advantage of an easy to access, and thus undervalued too, basic search engines.
If you are unfamiliar with the saying “use a search engine,” you may recognize its synonymous phrase, “just Google it.” You could simply “just Google,” whatever document, vital record, or other informational source you are seeking to build an ancestor’s story. But most likely you will find yourself sorting through a swamp of search results that have nearly nothing to do with the ancestor you’re researching. However, if you are wanting to avoid being oversaturated with unrelated research results there are three techniques I would suggest: using keywords words or phrases, properly using common words in search engines, and using symbols to narrow the information.
Using the proper keywords and or phrases can be critical to wading out most of the unwanted information and finding a particular piece that will be helpful in furthering an individual’s story on your family tree. Take for example if you are searching for vital documents, you probably wouldn’t want to type in something like documents about John Smith if you are searching for his vital records. Instead, this sort of search would broadly bring up information about every John Smith including every document that might mention someone of that name. Instead try a search that includes the term vital records like vital records for John Smith. Consider adding a date if you can. This will help the search engine eliminate any John Smiths that don’t fit within that era. Furthermore, as you are searching through the links, articles, and digitalized records that the engine may find remember to crosscheck that these terms are being used in the source you have pulled up. You can do this by clicking ctrl f on most computers and typing in keyword or phrase.
Another quick and easy search engine tip is to decrease the use of common words. In regular language we often use words like (a, the, an, etc.) to grammatically fill in sentences. Usages of these common filler words make things easy to understand for us humans, but more difficult for computers to determine which sources may be of the most importance to us, especially as researchers. Instead of typing phrases like, are the records of Smith County digitalized? Try typing something more like digitalized records Smith County.
Lastly, an often-unknown tactic to utilize search engines to their fullest potential comes in the form of using symbols. Specifically, the minus and plus signs. Putting a plus symbol before a keyword or phrase makes the engine interpret that it needs to find results containing that exact expression. If a minus is used instead this allows the engine to exclude any results that may have that exact expression linked to it.
I hope that these new search engine strategies will help you become more efficient and better adept at finding useful sources to aid in building your genealogical story. As always if you have any questions, please feel free to check out my longer form webinars where I dive more inadeptly into genealogical content. If you have any further questions, I have not answered there please feel free to contact me. Good luck as you continue on your genealogical journey and remember to come back for next week’s blog!
Winona I Laird,
The Genealogy Granny
