Google is a valuable tool for genealogy research, providing access to various resources and information. Here are some tips for using Google for genealogy:
Specify Your Search
Identify what you want to find. Formulate your question to Google just as you would to a research librarian or archivist.
Use Search Operators
- Use quotation marks to find exact matches. (You don’t need to put around the whole sentence. For instance, Where is the “National Dairy” in “Butte”)
- The word “AND” includes multiple words or phrases. How do you tell the search engine that you want to find Web sites that contain references to Keyword A and Keyword B? (Coal and Mines)
- The word “OR” combines searches. It is beneficial for finding synonyms or related concepts. Using “OR” allows you to conduct multiple similar searches simultaneously, saving time.
- Placing a tilde character (~) immediately in front of the keyword. asks Google to find pages with the word or words similar to it. The resulting pages for ~genealogy may include genealogy, family tree, roots, ancestry, heritage, vital records, or other words.
- Use the minus sign (-) to eliminate keywords. The minus sign is just a hyphen in front of a term you want to have excluded from the search results. For example, if you were looking for a salsa recipe, you might search for salsa and discover multiple definitions. There’s the dance. There’s the music. Don’t forget the food. By using -dancing or -music, we can focus solely on salsa recipes: salsa -dance -music. Or, if you do not want onions, add -onions.
- Don’t use “stop words.” Google often ignores small, commonly occurring words, such as ‘the,’ ‘at,’ and ‘of,’ and refers to them as stop words. When we search The Great Wall of China, we get about 471,000,000 results. By searching Great Wall China, we get about 815,000,000 results. And if we use the parenthesis around “The Great Wall of China,” we only get about 5,570,000 results.
- Use 3-5 keywords for the most relevant results in a search query. Using too many keywords will limit your results.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts enables you to set up multiple keyword searches to track specific information for free. It allows you to monitor any keyword or phrase you like without manually entering it.
Use Google Maps
Select a location and then use the “find businesses” tab to identify points of interest like churches, cemeteries, and historical societies. You can also see the surrounding areas.
Use Google Earth
Discover your ancestors’ hometowns, see how they look today, and locate nearby buildings, schools, and churches. You can also utilize Google Earth Pro to generate personalized maps of your ancestors’ surroundings. Click and drag the image to take a virtual walk down the street where your ancestors once lived.
Use Google Images
Google Image Search will display photos with a brief title and website address when searching for ancestors’ names, surnames, or places they lived, including nicknames or abbreviations. It provides exact matches and visually similar images based on your uploads and critical phrases. Clicking on a result will bring up a pop-up with more details about the image, potential copyright status, and a gallery of related photos.
You may also want to try Google’s Reverse Image search. This technique uses a photo rather than text to search Google.
To perform a reverse image search on Google, follow these steps:
1. Go to Google.com and click the “Images” link in the upper right corner.
2. Click on the camera icon in the search box.
3. You can drag and drop a photo from your computer onto the Google Search page or click “Upload” to select an image from your computer or mobile device.
4. Review the search results page for the related images and information.
Use Google Photos
You can create, edit, and add maps and text to your photo albums, containing up to 20,000 photos or videos. You can organize your albums by family, surname, individual, or event and label them with relevant information.
Google Books (One of my favorites!)
You may already know that Google Books will keyword search within billions of pages of text in published books worldwide. Some of these books are even available to read on the site. Searching Google Books can lead you to facts, stories, new sources for your research, and even images. I’ve found many ancestors this way.
Google News Archive
Google News Archive is no longer actively digitizing and indexing newspapers. However, it can still help you find online content for specific newspapers. You can access an alphabetical listing of newspapers and enter keyword searches in the search box on the webpage for all the newspapers listed there.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is the go-to resource for accessing scholarly articles, theses, dissertations, and other academic sources. It specializes in searching for high-level academic content. You can find specialized content on Google Scholar, such as biographies of little-known ministers or histories of small towns.
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