One of the most common ways to search for ancestry records is typing a basic query in Google. Most genealogy websites offer premium services and even if you manage to find free resources, there are a number of limitations that can stall your search for ancestry records because of the sheer complexity of the task in hand. In the end, the mighty search engine “Google” is the perfect choice to find remote links to your family history and ancestry. Who knows, a simple search could reveal you are related to Royalty and are next in line, sounds tempting doesn’t it?
So how can you make the most of a globally recognized search engine and turn it into your personal family history resource to sift through mountains of metadata and find what you have been looking for? The answer lies in the following search tips.
Search trick 1
To limit the number of search results you can use quotation marks in your search query. Quotation marks help you narrow down page requests and query hits. Most genealogy sites have online ancestry records that are open to public access and Google can narrow down the names from search query more efficiently using quotation marks.
Search trick 2
You can use the minus sign to ensure that the search engine does not throw up redundant information. Place the minus sign directly before every word in your search query with no space in between to exclude such data. This trick helps you to eliminate the possibility of getting duplicate hit because of common ancestor names.
Search trick 3
You can also get site-specific results by typing “site: SITEURL” before a term or group of terms to receive targeted results from that particular website. For example, if you want to receive specific page results from the Ancestry Records official website, simply enter site: ancestryrecords.com “yoursearchname” to get filtered results.
Search trick 4
Select a date range to narrow down specific site results. If you know the time period in which you want to track your family’s lineage and progress, simply put the year in your search query.
You might be wondering if it is even possible to get accurate results from a simple Google search query to track down results from billions of ancestry records. Note that there are many additional factors that determine the success or failure of your search query. While it is impossible to anticipate the hiccups you might face, these simple tricks can shed some light on your family history with one or multiple leads till you find a reliable source of information, naturally for free.