How To Find My Great Great Grandparents

Google your family tree

author of googleyourfamilytree.com

For family history enthusiasts throughout the world,search is our hobby, our passion and our addiction. We tin spend years searching for details which enable u.s.a. to complete a unmarried box on a pedigree chart, only to be rewarded with two new empty boxes that remind u.s.a. how much more nosotros accept to acquire – and the phone call to learn, for many, is irresistible.

creative search logo used for the 500th anniversary of the Piri Reis map

With more than 25 billion pages included in Google'due south index of the web, however, even these powerful costless tools can claiming some users who are met with a haystack of results instead of just a few precise needles.

The services provided by Google accept become an indispensable assortment of tools helping united states of america filter and find web pages, photographs, historical books and newspapers, patent filings, legal opinions, detailed maps, videos, satellite imagery, and even the ability to have a virtual walk down the streets where our ancestors walked years before.

By taking the time to understand and use some essential Google filtering techniques, you can reduce the number of results obtained for your queries, while simultaneously increasing their relevancy for your detail area of involvement.

"World wide web" May Not Mean What You Think

When presenting at genealogy conferences, I often ask if anyone knows what the acronym 'WWW' stands for. Every bit if reading from cue cards, the audience typically responds in unison – "World Broad Web." As I remind them that we are family historians starting time, engineering users 2d, their await of surprise is speedily followed by laughter

Equally family historians, nosotros are always asking Who, Where, and When.

Who from the family tree am I looking for at the moment?
Where were they when a detail issue occurred?
When was it that the event likely took place?

That's the foundation for everything nosotros do in genealogy.

Lucky for us, Google is perfectly suited to answering family history questions, as well as many others. We can greatly increase our odds of finding meaningful answers when we know how to enquire.

Google family unit history basics

When using Google to search the Net for clues about the lives of our ancestors, proceed in listen that the keywords best suited to help you observe what you're looking for lie in answering the questions who, where, and when. Often in that particular order.

Exist specific in your search

Even when we cannot locate clues about our own ancestors, we can improve our understanding of our family story past looking at more than general information for a grouping of people from the aforementioned time and place.

For example: If yous know your family came to the U.s. from southern Italia in 1902, then search for information about that group and that time frame.

For circumstances when you may non take a total name or may be unsure of a spelling, providing the elements that you practise know can aid Google start y'all downward the right path.

How Google search works

Before setting off to explain certain tips and techniques, it'due south of import to accept a good foundation of the basics of what Google is doing each time you submit a search. The fact that the web is also changing every second makes it that much more than hard for many of us to fully capeesh.

Google and other search engines use automated programs, often referred to as spiders, to 'crawl' the web in search of spider web pages and their links to other pages or sites. With each visit, Google catalogues the spiders' discoveries, which are then added to one of the largest and most comprehensive indexes of the web known to be.

When nosotros search, we are actually request Google to look through their index of the web for matching terms, not the live net itself. Google continually refines this process, and every bit a result, almost queries are resolved in well under one 2d. Google uses as much data as information technology can to help ensure your results are the most relevant ones possible, while all the same doing so as quickly as possible.

For example: Google tin can often detect the geographic location where your computer or mobile device is connecting to the Internet, and this is useful information if your query is, 'have out restaurant' or 'electrician' or 'catholic cemetery.' In each case, Google can provide far more relevant results using your location and keywords you lot provided, in combination with other relevant information.

Search tip: Google is not by and large case sensitive (with but a very few exceptions), so genealogy, GENEALOGY, Genealogy, and gEnEaLoGy will all yield the same results.

How to utilise (or non apply) Stop Words

Another item to note is that Google volition frequently ignore small, commonly occurring words, such as 'the' 'at' 'of.' Google refers to these every bit 'stop words' and also provides a mechanism for y'all to use them if and when you want, if that is indeed what you want.

Consider the following examples:

	Google Web Search	Results
A.	the statue of liberty	25,700,000
B.	statue liberty	25,800,000
C.	"the statue of freedom"	6,930,000

A search for the statue of freedom would be processed every bit statue freedom. Removing 'the' and 'of' enables Google to more apace answer to a 2 give-and-take query, but as well will non probable bear upon the relevance of the results provided.

Google Search Essentials

According to Google, a 'typical' query consists of three individual keywords. Using our WWW rule, we should try to provide a given name, surname, and place name for most queries, but only if that information is known.

By way of a simple example, consider

In the example to a higher place, we are request Google to compare the keywords provided against their index, returning only those pages that match all three keyword criteria.

Note: Google uses an implied 'AND' in between each term, requiring both keywords to be on the resulting pages. There are not necessarily in any sequence or proximity to one another.

Depending upon who y'all are looking for and the dynamics of the surname, you lot may demand to give Google more or less data. Yous might face involve as well many results (in the millions) and too few results (zip).

Hither are a few examples from my own family history:

Common Surnames

While the surname Lynch might not be as common every bit Smith or Jones, it's certainly not unique.

The more mutual the name - specially if the word itself has other meanings (e.chiliad. Brown, Ford, Baker, etc.) - the more of import it is that you help requite some keywords for context so Google can find results that have some relevancy to what you're searching for.

For case: I provide the get-go and last name for my grandfather, followed by the proper noun of the city where he lived his entire life. Earlier that query had generated nearly ii.5 million results, just when I include the keyword teaching asking Google to search for only genealogy pages, the number of results drops to merely 117,000.

Search tip: Placing a tilde character (~) immediately in front of the keyword genealogy is asking Google to find pages with the discussion genealogy or words that have a like meaning. The resulting pages, therefore, may have the word "genealogy, family tree, roots, ancestry, heritage, vital records," and a host of other words.

While searchable terms are not always pure synonyms, they are certainly words nosotros often acquaintance with genealogy and which Google has learned to too consider as similar words.

How to structure a Google search query

There is no single best fashion to structure a query, but through trial and error over several years, I've developed techniques that help to quickly filter results so nosotros're left with just the type of web pages that family unit historians await.

Yous can raise the filtering of the above instance by adding boosted keywords, simply likewise by employing special syntax so Google volition know more than precisely what you lot're looking for.

For example: the name Patrick Lynch appears inside quotation marks as "Patrick lynch". That instructs Google to find pages where Patrick Lynch appears as a consecutive string of characters (what Google calls an 'exact phrase match').

Next: I've added the keyword Vermont as a location proper name, only in this instance, I have placed a 'minus' symbol immediately earlier the word. This instructs Google to exclude all pages that contain the word Vermont.

This filters out the pages dealing with Patrick Lynch from Waterbury, Vermont. My family unit lived in Connecticut. This has reduced the number of results from nigh 117,000 to fewer than one,000.

These examples show how you can use a few additional filters to remove a significant number of results that are not likely to have any relevance for your ain family research.

Spelling Variations For Family Names

Name variations are another common claiming faced past many family historians. It is not unusual to find two or more than variant spellings for the family surname.

In my instance, my paternal grandmother had the surname Phelan. Or was it Phalen or Phallon or Whelan or Whalen? I've seen information technology so many different ways on "official" documents; information technology's hard to know for sure.

Your family proper noun may have been changed all together for a variety of reasons. I'll cover the details of searching for variant surnames in a divide commodity.

For example: I employ the 'OR' operator betwixt two mutual variations of the surname Phelan.

Search tip: This is placed betwixt one or more than terms and must announced in UPPER Case for Google to perform the conditional search, allowing either result to appear in your results. Undercase 'or' will be ignored as a terminate word every bit described previously.

I used the two virtually common spellings for my grandmother'south maiden name, forth with other keywords described earlier. With just 534 results, it's likely that I could quickly observe something of relevance.

How to employ 'OR' Google search technique for location

This aforementioned technique tin can be employed when you are non certain about a location. If family legend has it that your groovy grandparents came to America through the Port of Boston, but yous have a clue that points to Philadelphia, and so search for boston OR philadelphia .

Search tip: Only be sure the word 'OR' appears in uppercase, otherwise it will exist ignored and the meaning of your query will alter significantly– an implied AND will be placed in between Boston and Philadelphia.

Requite it a try

Hiding somewhere in that "worldwide haystack" are clues that may be of involvement to y'all and a few others researching the same family. Oft, the 'adventitious discoveries' are the ones that provide the most fascinating clues.

Experiment using your keywords, quotation marks, the 'OR' operator, the minus and tilde symbols to further refine your query. While they tin exist used in whatsoever social club, I'd suggest trying them in the order listed within the examples shown for best results.

Delight likewise remember that not every query needs special characters – you should filter gradually, refining your query based on the number of results you obtain. This volition help prevent filtering by something that may exist highly relevant.

Boosted techniques are described in my book, "Google Your Family unit Tree," and you can find free details for other more avant-garde family unit history queries at: GoogleYourFamilyTree.com