Mocavo.com by Michael J. Leclerc As mentioned above, Google has become a vital resource for genealogical research. Last week saw the launch of a new website designed to take the best features of Google and make them easier to use for genealogical research. Cliff Shaw, CEO and founder of Mocavo, has a long track record of creating valuable products for genealogists. The GenForum message boards (now available on Genealogy.com), GenCircles.com, and Family Tree Legends software are just some of his significant contributions to the field. Mocavo.com is the world's largest free genealogy search engine. It provides access to free genealogy content on the web. Mocavo indexes publicly accessible websites and sends searchers directly to the sites. It is a great way to do one-stop searching of websites like the Internet Archives, Find a Grave, state archives and historical societies, Ellis Island, and more. The best thing about Mocavo is that it specifically targets genealogical websites, automatically removing extraneous results (like Facebook pages, etc.) that appear in Google searches. This function is extremely helpful, especially when researching a very common name. While there are times I wish to cast a wide net with a Google search, it is very nice to have a search engine that filters out all of that noise for me. For the best results, put names in quotes. Mocavo will automatically search for instances of "firstname lastname," "lastname, firstname," and even "firstname middlename lastname." You can do "or" searches (looking for this "or" that) by utilizing the pipe symbol |. The | is usually above the Enter key on an American computer keyboard. Similarly, you can omit certain words by using the minus sign (or dash). While I found many results I have already seen on Google, I have been overjoyed to see the results limited to genealogy results only. In researching my book on the descendants of Josiah Franklin, I'm sure you can imagine how many non-genealogical sites make mention of Benjamin Franklin! The site is currently very centered on North American materials, but this is starting to change. Materials from GenUKI are available, and the Ireland Genealogy Project just announced that their materials will soon be indexed and available through Mocavo. Mocavo is always looking for new information to index, and users can suggest websites for the site to index. Everything from large archives and websites to individual family blogs have been indexed, bringing additional traffic to many sites. Unfortunately, a few groups, such as USGenWeb, have restricted access to Mocavo's indexing, and these materials are unavailable. While it is understandable why groups with gated access (such as Ancestry.com, AmericanAncestors.org, and FamilySearch.org) have not been indexed, it is difficult to understand that those with free and open accessibility would not want to provide greater access to their materials. Mocavo is totally free for users, and does not pretend to own any of the content; it only makes it easier for users to find information. Even more perplexing is that USGenWeb, for example, while precluding access from Mocavo, freely allows Google's indexer to crawl the site and bring users in. One would think that they would want more genealogy-specific users to find them. Mocavo.com is an excellent addition to the genealogical researcher's toolkit. I'm certain it will only become increasingly valuable (and popular) as more sites are indexed and users discover how tremendously useful this resource is.

I can perhaps understand USGenWeb might not like it. I just did a search on Mocavo, and it listed a result. The URL given underneath the result is just listed as www.rootsweb.ancestry.com, not the complete URL. When you click on the result, it goes to page: http://www.mocavo.com/visit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rootsweb.ancestry.com%2F~ar nwags%2Fdeeds%2FBC_DEEDS_A_C.htm which is hardly the way to be able to find the URL again, cite it, or want to bookmark it. You can also not see the title of the page you are on, only the title "Mocavo-The Largest Free Genealogy & Family Tree Search Engine." Only after some experimenting did I find that if you click on the "Close This Bar" in the upper right hand corner, getting rid of the Mocavo search engine can you see the URL is actully: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~arnwags/deeds/BC_DEEDS_A_C.htm and the title of the page is actually, "Grantor Index to Deeds 1833-1875 A-C," The way the Mocavo search engine stays on the page you go to makes it appear that the page is owned by Mocavo and annoying. I can't speak for USGenWeb, but that may be why they object. Information about the site should include the above explanation of how to be able to actually see the page/URL you are on,not the Mocavo version. Rick Saunders