Most search engines default to AND. So that if the search entry is John Q. Jones, your search engine will look for John + Q+ Jones and deliver somewhat relevant results, including those that include only John + Jones, or only +Jones. I don't know of any search engine that will assume "Mr." or "Uncle" or "father" is part of the search parameter, and if your visitors are using those search terms, it is up to you to educate your visitors as to how searches can and do work. You can explain that they can search for "John Q. Jones" enclosed in quotes, and their searches will return only that precise sequence of letters and spaces. OTOH, the entry John Q. Jones will default to AND and return results for "John," "Q," and "Jones" without any attempt to tie them together. Freefind has a page explaining how their (and many) search engines work at <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.freefind.com_searchtipspop.html&d=DwIBAg&c=kKqjBR9KKWaWpMhASkPbOg&r=AGsq94QXfKqnOmeiylQOdyiSx1pxsPac8QlHnLzZS9o&m=uvYOcPGQ7L-CJxeRChCuibc3QmO0aDfX4sBcUvjx3Z0&s=tMNHSi2UEy6mLQAvAXsqjO7IfRmLPD_YnhEPwjkR3iM&e=> You might want to educate your site visitors by referring them there. Pat A. At 06:27 PM 8/24/2018, William Thompson wrote: >Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2018 11:22:00 -0400 >From: William Thompson <billthompson76@gmail.com> >Subject: [FreeHelp]Identifying People for Site Searches >To: freepages-help@rootsweb.com >Message-ID: > <CAJb8BhZ_HrA8tAD2vDDu86YnHw2_WbyvuxKN-cTsRpBiqaJxmg@mail.gmail.com> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > >I use a site search service that works the way it's supposed to -- matching >words. My site has a lot of old letters. But when people try to search the >site for references to them they usually are unsuccessful. For example, >they want to find pages on my site that refer to John Q. Jones. But a >document may refer to him as "John Jones", "J.Q. Jones", "Mr. Jones", >"Uncle John". "father", etc. so the searcher comes up empty handed.