How to Make the Most of Your Online Searches

The hunt. It gives outdoorsmen, thrifters, pickers, and genealogists all the thrill that keeps them coming back. The search, however, is a different beast. I’m talking about Google searches and record searches on many of the popular sites that house millions of scanned and catalogued records. It can be overwhelming.

Even though digital searches are generally quicker than manual, there is still an art to online searching. You have to know the tricks to pull up solid information and not a bunch of junk results.

​I’m still learning, but I can share a few tips that have helpful for me.

1. When searching names on Ancestry or FamilySearch, try some variations in spelling and given names. Maybe they went by an initial, or a middle name. Are there possible misspellings or alternate spellings? Try all you can think of. If the person you’re searching is female, you can try their maiden name, married name, and maybe additional married names if you know they were married more than once.
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   Another way is to add a wildcard symbol. An asterisk “*” represents zero to five letters (e.g., a search for “john” might return “john, johnson, johnsen, johnathon, johns”, etc.).
   Any use of the asterisk requires at least three non-wildcard characters (you cannot search for “Sm*”, but could use “Smi*“). A single character is represented by question mark “?” (e.g., “Sm?th” equals both “Smith” and Smyth”).
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2. Don’t start off too specific. You might think that filling out every box in a search form would give you your ancestor quickly. If you’re lucky enough to know all the info about your ancestor the fields ask, that is awesome! But don’t type it all in. Start sparse and work your way to more detailed. (You can start a bit more detailed if you have a common name such as Jones or Smith). This will give you more chances to find them due to a misspelling or error in dates/locations. Try to start with a surname, gender, and about a 10 year range of birth year. Add a location of state or county to broaden the chances you are mistaken in exactly what town they were born or lived in, and click Search! Adjust your search from there.
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3. In Google, remember these tricks: Place a minus sign before a word or number (or multiple words) to exclude unwanted results (Example: “barnhart, jason” 1888 virginia -ohio). The minus sign can be placed in front of many terms to further refine results ( -whitehaven -somerset -1921). Make sure that the minus sign is placed directly before the word with no space in between.
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   A similar way that searches spans of years is typing in a Date..Date, for example, 1899..1904. If you want to make sure it doesn’t pull up a date within that or even outside of that range, you can use the minus sign on a year. (1899..1904 -1900 -1905)
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   Why add quotes around “barnhart, jason”? Add quotes when you want to do an exact search for those words.
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   ​You can learn more about the tips in #1 & #3 on the Family History Daily blog »
   Learn more on FamilySearch »