Someone sent this to me today.....sharing with you: - Tips for Googling by Pam Cerutti, Editor NGS Google (http://www.google.com <http://www.google.com/>) has become the search tool of choice for many internet users and among them, many genealogists. In fact, people who use it to find websites containing information they're seeking have even come to change the name into a verb, as in, "I'll Google that term and find out more about it." When it comes to search results, more is not always better. If the results you want are hiding in a long list that includes lots of unwanted items, you will either spend undue time trying to identify the desirable items or abandon the search in frustration. A little more effort in defining your search can yield a much more valuable list of results. As with any web site that provides an advanced search option, Google offers advanced search fields that let you filter out many listings that would otherwise clutter your results. Once you know the shortcuts, you can also use some of these filters in the standard search field. Tip #1 Enter all the words that you definitely want the search to find, separating each with a space. As a simple example, I searched for a person named William Picket. I entered my search for the words William and Picket like this: William Picket Google found 747,000 websites for me to search! Knowing that my person lived in Massachusetts, I added this to the search as follows: William Picket Massachusetts This brought my search results down to 280,000 listings. This is still a huge number, but the principle applies: one additional word can whittle down your list by a quarter, a third, or more. The more terms you require in each search result, the shorter your list of search results will be. Tip #2 Put quotation marks around any words that you want to appear in the same exact manner as your entry. Using the same example, I added quotation marks around the person's name as follows: "William Picket" Massachusetts This time, my list contained only 126 items, a very manageable number. The very first listing brought me to a picture of Capt. William Picket's gravestone and a transcription of his epitaph. Now, one might think that the most noteworthy listings would appear early in this list. Not necessarily. The order of listings is based on priorities that may not match yours, so don't neglect the later ones. In this example, the forty-sixth search result was a link to Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files. Google performs further filtering behind the scenes. In the above example, it displayed 48 items initially. At the end of this list was the following message: In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 48 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included. If you don't find what you want in the initial list, clicking on this message allows you to investigate the rest of the 126 results. While the initial listings will be interspersed with the additional items, it's easy to tell which items you have looked at because those listings will appear in a different color from the listings you have not pursued; on my screen, the links I have clicked on are purple, and all others are blue. Tip #3 Use a minus sign(-) to specify any term that you want to exclude from your search results, again separating each search filter with a space. For example, I might want to eliminate references to picket fences or to men who used the nickname, "Bill." I can still use quotation marks to find exact matches for the name, along with additional words that I want to appear anywhere; however, this time, I add a minus sign before each word that I wish to exclude. Here is my entry: "william picket" massachusetts -fence -bill This reduces my search results to 91 items, not a large reduction when the list is already short. However, let's suppose that I chose not to use "Massachusetts" in the search. When I removed the place name, the search for William Picket yielded 1230 items. By excluding the words "fence" and "bill" as shown above, almost half of those items disappeared from my list. Tip #4 This option is not a search filter, but it can help you to manage your list of search results. At the end of the Google Search box and below the link to the Advanced Search, you will find a link to the Preference window. If you click on this link and scroll down the displayed Preferences options, you will find a checkbox for a Results Window. If you place a check in this box, and then click the Save button at the top of the window, any item that you click on from your search results will open in a new browser window. I find this useful because I sometimes get carried away on a listing, clicking on additional links inside the item from which I started. If I find a web site I want to spend more time reviewing, this option lets me keep that page open while I pursue other search results. Tip #5 As a final tip, it's easy and often worthwhile to extend the same search criteria to Google Books. Once you finish perusing your search results, notice the left end of the line below the Google title banner. Beside the word "Web" -- which shows that you are searching the World Wide Web -- you will see a link named "Books." Clicking this link will apply your current search values to Google Books, a vast collection of books that the folks at Google have digitized. Your Web search may not find all entries in this collection, so be sure to conduct this search as well. The examples used here only illustrate the basic functions described. If you take a little time to experiment with your own search combinations, you may find the time you spend Googling can pay off.