Google Search Tips for Genealogy- Beginner

1) Use lower case letters- Google is not case sensitive

2) Do not use punctuation

3) Your word order matters

4) Use roots words- Google will search all forms of the word automatically

Example: genealogy will give you results concerning genealogy, genealogist, genealogists,          genealogical and so on

5) Use the approximate symbol (~) to find words with similar meanings

Example: genealogy~descendant will give you results for descendancy research concerning  genealogy, such as descendants, lineage, etc.

6) Use OR to get results for similar meanings

Example: family history OR genealogy will give you results for that topic under either term

7) Use * to fill in the unknown

Example: john * smith will give you a plethora of john smiths with different middle names

8) Use … for date ranges

Example: 1890…1910 will give you dates anywhere in that range

9) Use quotation marks “ “ to search for the exact words/phrase in the exact order

Example: “descendants of john smith” or “ancestry of john smith” will give you results for those exact phrases

Example: “john smith” will only bring up John Smiths, not Johns and Smiths
 
10) Use parentheses ( ) to search for those terms first before anything outside of those terms

Example: (genealogy OR family history)

11) Use + or – symbols to only get results of a particular category of a topic

Example: dna+triangulation gives you only results concerning dna triangulation, dna +genealogy -testing gives you results concerning topics of DNA in the genealogical/family history world without giving you results about DNA tests, testing or testing sites, and genealogy research -sites will give you results about genealogy research methods, tools, resources etc. without giving you pages and    pages of different genealogy/family history sites
 
Now let’s apply what we’ve learned:

Example: "john*smith" 1890...1910 +genealogy will bring up all John Smiths with an unknown middle name, with a date range of 1890 to 1910, and concerning genealogy

Example: "john*smith" 1890...1910 ~descendant will give you results of all John Smiths with an unknown middle name, with a date range of 1890 to 1910, and concerning only descendancy or family line research, charts, family trees, genealogy, family history, etc.

Example: ("john*smith") 1890...1910 (~descendant) will churn out all John Smiths with an unknown middle name, and concerning only descendancy, family lines, etc. of those John Smiths, with a date range of 1890-1910, but will not focus on that date range. This is good to use if you are guessing the date range.

Example: ("john m smith") ~descendant will bring up all descendancy, lineage, etc. on John M Smiths

I hope you have found this to be helpful in your genealogy/family history research! 😊
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​Find more tips for your family history and genealogy research under the Genealogy Research Tips category.

P.S... My older site theme does not support the "Leave a Reply" field labels; if you'd like to leave a comment on a blog, the fields are: Name, Email, Site (if you'd like), and Comment, the standard fields 😉

This post is a participant in the 6th Annual Genealogy Blog Party!

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