Ancestry Forms and Information
6 Hidden search tips to help locate your ancestors
Apply Quotation Marks Also known as a string search limits search results in Google. When you type a name like Dorothy Gregory, Google will search the entire title and test on pages for those terms. They do not need to be related to each other, so you may turn up a page with Dorothy and Gregory, but not necessarily a page where these terms appear together. Use “Dorothy Gregory” or Gregory, Dorothy” to limit results (remember that many genealogy related sites place the last name first). Also apply Quotations around terms like “Obituary” to make them exact, otherwise Google will substitute other words like ‘death’ or ‘died’. This can be helpful in some situations, but for others can be a big hassle and turn up many unwanted results. Use the Minus Sign Many times when we search for ancestors, especially common names, we find that a certain person or location we are not looking for turns up again and again, clouding results. For instance, a Dorothy Gregory who lived in Louisiana keeps coming up in our search. She is not the person we are looking for, so we can exclude the term Louisiana. Place a minus sign before a term to exclude these unwanted results. For example: “gregory, dorothy” 1930 Bay City -Louisiana). The minus sign can be placed in front of many terms to refine results. (-California -Louisiana -1907) or term strings (-Gregory, Dorothy K”). Just make sure the minus sign is placed directly before the term with no space in between. This works to exclude specific sites as well (-myheritage). Get Site Specific Results If you would like to get search results only for a specific website such as FamilySearch, use ‘site:SITEURL’ before a term or terms to do this. For example: site:familysearch.org ”gregory,dorothy” No space between “site” and the url. No need for ‘http://www’ either. Search only Page Titles Search only web page titles by using ‘allintitle:’ Example: allintitle: “Gregory, Dorothy.” You can also search only the text, and exclude titles by using ‘allintext:’ Search a Date Range Search multiple dates at one time without having to enter them individually. This is very helpful if you are looking for birth, marriage or death records but do not know the exact date of the event. Add DATE...DATE to your search box to accomplish this. Two periods between the dates. For example: 1930..1948 We know that Dorothy Gregory was born in 1930 This will bring up only pages that include one or all of the dates 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, and so on to 1948. Exclude any date by typing -DATE, such as -1929 after our other terms. Search Terms Near each other There is a way to ask Google to find terms near each other. Enter AROUND(1) between terms to do this. For example, “Dorothy Gregory” AROUND(10) 1930. Google will look for pages where the exact name Dorothy Gregory appears within 10 words of the date 1930. You can change the modifying number to anything you want. (”Dorothy Gregory” AROUND(3) 1930 or “Dorothy Gregory AROUND(1) James) A lower number means a closer association, which usually has fewer results. You can apply this to multiple terms. Example: “Gregory, Dorothy” AROUND(10) James AROUND(5) 1930 This is a Great way to help you find more relevant results. |
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