Alan E. Mann, AG

mngs@alanmann.com                                                                                Accredited Genealogist

www.alanmann.com/articles                                                                prepared September 2004

                                 

 

Tips for getting the Most from the Internet

Basics

Some of the basics I would like to cover include optimizing screen real estate (the amount of the screen that can be devoted to the Internet page) and using favorites. Screen real estate or viewing area is affected by your toolbar layout as well by resolution and taskbar settings.

1.      Set your resolution as high as your preference and eyesight will allow (right click on desktop, pick properties, then settings).

2.      Consider using “auto hide” taskbar (right click on taskbar, properties)

3.      Consider changing the web browser toolbars to “icon only” to save space.

4.      Consolidate toolbars by putting more than one on a line, and eliminate any you don’t use.

5.      Remove icons you don’t use from the toolbar (and add those you need).

6.      USE your links bar! You CAN add folders to the links bar. Drag and drop the “e” from the address bar to the links bar to add favorites.

7.      When you need a little more viewing area, hit F11 (F11 again to revert).

 

You may want to consider importing another’s favorites. The Family History Library’s Information Services Team maintains a list of “favorite” websites for use on the Library’s computers, and has made this list available in the library to export for personal use. The self-extracting zip file and the instructions for importing are available in the library. For MNGS members, I have brought a copy of this file and will leave it with the society officers.

 

Searching
I often tell people the Internet is the richest source of genealogical information available today. The amount, scope, and availability of data are staggering, even incomprehensible. It is virtually certain that there is valid information about your ancestors on the Internet that you don’t have. Information that you would probably want if you only knew it was there.  So how can you find it? With a lot of searching.

 

Generally, a genealogist’s Internet searching has two phases.

1.      First, you must find the website that may have the desired information.

2.      Then, you search that website for the desired information.

 

Finding the Website

 

There are many ways to find a website. The most common is that someone else tells you about it. You can increase the likelihood of this happening by participating in society meetings (like this one), talking to other genealogists (phone, mail, email, online), or participating in online discussion groups or mailing lists.

 

Another common way is to use a directory site. The best example is Cyndi’s List (www.cyndislist.com). Here, you can get more from a directory site by learning how it is organized and by reading the help screens and general information. It is almost always possible to search a directory site. Another directory site is Yahoo.

 

When the above two methods haven’t yielded results, many genealogists turn to search engines. While “search engine” can be correctly used in several different ways, the most common usage is a web tool used to find web pages on a specific topic. It is important to understand what a search engine is, what it includes, and how to best use it. The answers to these questions may vary between each search engine. Generally, a search engine indexes web sites that those running it have been able to identify and index. Some index every word, some index only the first page, and a few just the first few sentences.

 

Search engines are not designed specifically for genealogy, but rather search for whatever words you input to search. There are thousands of search engines. One source claims to list over 809,000 search engines. Basically, a search engine visits web sites and indexes their content. While a search engine can index the name Richard Poor,  it wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a person by that name, Poor Richard’s almanac, and a play that had the line “Alas, poor Richard…” Once when searching for wills left by my Brooks family ancestors, a search engine confidently directed me to a page where I found the sentence “Garth Brooks will be appearing…” There are some tricks to using search engines. Use unusual names whenever possible. When searching for a common family name, add the word genealogy or the phrase “family history” after the name to narrow down your search.

 

The best known search engine today is Google. Google indexes every word on the sites that it has indexed. It is estimated that Google’s 4 billion + indexed pages represents somewhere in the area of 15-20% of the web. That means that over 80% of the web remains unrepresented in Google! To learn more about how to use Google, click the advanced search link on the Google page, or use the resources listed at the end of this article. There are two good reasons to use more than one search engine. One is that no search engine indexes more than 20% of the web and since none of them index the SAME 20% or less, there are sites on each that may not be listed on others. Another reason is that there are different methods of searching—different ways to apply your search terms. You need to read the help page and experiment with each search engine to find the best way to use that search engine.

 

Since there are so many different search engines, one increasingly popular search method is to use a tool called a metasearch engine. What is metasearch?  The term does not yet appear in most dictionaries, but it is a common term on the web. It is used most commonly to describe an Internet search engine that sends a query to several search engines and combines the results. The general idea is that you submit keywords in its search box, and it then transmits your search to several individual search engines simultaneously. Within a few seconds, you get back results that came from several search engines. Metasearch engines do not have their own index or database of Web pages; they send your search terms to those kept by search engine companies, then combine the results from their indexes.

 

What you need to know about metasearching is that the quality of their results depends on what they search and how they organize the results. A metasearch cannot be better than the sum of the individual databases they query.

 

There are some good general web metasearch engines which are not designed as genealogical search tools, but which can be used to search for genealogy or genealogically-related topics. 

 

What makes a good Internet metasearch is an engine that searches good databases, accepts complex searches, integrates results well, eliminates duplicates, and offers additional features such as clustering by subjects within your search results.

 

While there are many metasearch engines, I would like to show you one with some extra helpful features -- ZapMeta (www.zapmeta.com).  Try turning snapshots on. The past versions can be helpful, and I love the preview panes!

 

Three companies have tried to apply the broad metasearch concept to genealogy. The two still in business are Internet Family Finder and MultiGen. Perhaps the best example of a multiple-site metasearch is Internet Family Finder (www.genealogy.com/ifftop.html). This searches over 300,000 separate family history databases. Unfortunately, the search has no true fields other than first and last name, but those have been well identified—making it much more useful than text only searches.

 

Another example is a tool rather than a metasearch—Culman’s MultiGen. Found at ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/CACulman/MultiGen.htm, this site has you enter a name once, then submits a search request to ten genealogy sites at once.  If you select the “open new window” option and then click on “Search them all,” you will get ten windows with the separate results from each of the ten sites. While not a true metasearch because it doesn’t combine the results, it can save time and conduct several searches at once…

 

Using the above methods, we can assume that we’ve now found a website that we want to use. Now we have to consider the different ways of searching a single site.

 

 

Searching the Website

 

Here, we can talk about Ancestry, Heritage Quest Online, FamilySearch, RootsWeb, or a variety of other web sites. These are sites that have a lot of databases, but have a search that looks through and presents results from all of the different databases. These really are metasearches because they search many databases, but metaseach is normally used to describe something that searches many sites rather than just many databases on a single site.

 

USGenWeb. The simplest would be the USGenWeb Archive. Here, there are hundreds of thousands of files representing extracts, transcriptions, abstracts, and indexes to many millions of names. The site search engine allows you to search all of their files at once or all of the files for any one state. However, the search options are extremely limited. Basically, you can search for any word in any of the files selected, but you cannot specify whether the word is a name, place, relationship, or something else. This is called a freeform, general, or unfielded search. While it does offer the advantage of searching many things at once, it doesn’t give much flexibility to limit or narrow the search results.

 

Ancestry. This is a site with many different databases. They have made a default search that searches across those databases—census, wills, family history books, obituaries, and more. You usually search by name, but can add country, state or province, year range, keyword, or record type. You can also specify whether to use soundex or exact spelling. The search template does not change when you specify a record type. But if you select a record type from the list at the right, the search template changes. You will then probably only be able to specify name and keyword. You also will get a list of databases so that you can further restrict your search. The general policy for Ancestry is to search the database for the items specified, but to ignore any input fields that don’t apply to that database. For example, if you specify a range of years, but the database being searched doesn’t specify years, Ancestry’s metasearch will just ignore the year range and display any results from that database.

 

FamilySearch. This site lists the databases it searches along the left. The default is “all resources,” a metasearch. You can limit your search to a specific database to get additional search options. FamilySearch’s general policy is to restrict your search fields to just those fields that are common to the databases being searched. Thus, an all resources search has search fields. When you select census records, you get different search fields. When you select one census year to search, you get yet more options unique to that census. Exceptions include the web site search, which disregards everything you enter except surname (this search is nearly useless, except for unusual surnames).

 

Heritage Quest Online. This site has some very useful ways of grouping results and actually has the most flexible census searches. It is less of a metasearch than the other sites listed here because it has three categories, and has no single search that searches all three categories. Nonetheless, there are thousands of databases searched within a category.

 

Hopefully, you can see that your searches will be more successful if you understand the limitations, capabilities, and “gotchas” of the site or search tool that you are using. The best rule is to READ THE HELP files relating to searching. They are often very helpful.

 

Clustering Metasearches

 

Clustering metasearch engines find results and group results by common terms found on the resulting pages. This can be very helpful by suggesting other terms that you may recognize and use to narrow down your search results.  Two unique examples of clustering metasearches are Kartoo (www.kartoo.com), and Vivisimo (www.vivisimo.com). The strategy is using these tools is to search for a name, records type, or concept and then use the words in common on the left to focus in on what you are looking for.

 

 

Yet More Search Engine Information

 

For more general Internet search tools and information on search engines, see searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156241 (metasearching),

searchenginewatch.com/resources/index.php (facts, tutorials, explanations), and

www.searchenginewatch.com/facts/index.php.

 

Doesn’t forget the need to know what you are searching—what’s the scope, the source, and how do you use it?

 

 

 

 

©Copyright 1999-2004 by Alan E. Mann, AG. All rights reserved. Written permission to reproduce all or part of this syllabus material in any format, including photocopying, data retrieval, or the Internet, must be secured in advance from the copyright holder.