----- Original Message ----- From: 'Greg Matthews' <dialzero@bellsouth.net> To: <varoots@rootsweb.com>, <va-southside@rootsweb.com>, <scsaluda@rootsweb.com>, <sc-old96@rootsweb.com>, <sc-genealogy@rootsweb.com>, <nchalifa@rootsweb.com>, <scedgefi@rootsweb.com> Sent: Fri Jul 6 0:48 Subject: Fwd: [NCHALIFA] How to use Google to create powerful genealogy searches Rootsweb just added a new GOOGLE listserv for discussion of search techniques using google.com. I just made a large post on there that I thought I would share with the other lists I belong to. You will be surprised at some of the results you get with these search techniques. I use them practically every day when I'm researching. I know a lot of people have no idea of the power of google search techniques. A while back I started my own list of helpful google operators with examples of them. So, to hopefully get this list started I thought I would share them. Feel free to cross-post this to other lists if you like. You go to google and type the commands into the search box to use them. Alternately, if you have the google toolbar you can type the commands in the toolbox search box. 1) How to search for sites that link back to another site: example: Let's say you've found a great web site for your Smythe family research. Let's say that site is called www.smythefamily.com. There might be other people out there who also like that site and have linked back to it, and maybe you've never seen that other site. The command to find that other site is: link:www.smythe.com This will give you a list of any sites that google has indexed that link to www.smythe.com. 2) How to search for sites that are similar to another site: This technique is the same as if you clicked the "Similar pages" link on a list of returned results from a standard google search. What it will do is show you sites that cover material that is similar to the site you are interested in. For the example I'll use my own Mat(t) hews genealogy site: related:www.bluntrazor.com If you used this command you would get a short list of sites that google says are related to or similar to my site. 3) How to restrict a google search to a single web site or domain: We all use google or similar search pages to find things related to our genealogy research, but how often do we get TONS and TONS of results that are of no interest to us? A lot. Wouldn't it be really useful if you could restrict a search to a single web site? Let's say you only want to search rootsweb (sure they have search links for everything, but I don't think they have a single search to look at everything at once) or you only want to search the forums at genealogy.com. There are several different ways to search for different things so I'll show all the ones that come to mind with examples for each: The first again uses my web site to search for the surname "Pace": site:bluntrazor.com Pace The search returns 11 results and the search box on my site returns 12 so google does pretty good with that one (always remember that google can only return results for pages that it has indexed and there is no guarantee that it has indexed every single page on a web site.) Let's take that a little further and search for a man named Thomas Pace. Most people would put Thomas Pace in quote marks " " and you can certainly do that with your search, eg. site:bluntrazor.com "Thomas Pace", but I find it easier to use a google shortcut: site:bluntrazor.com Thomas.Pace Saves us a keystroke doing that. I find this search method really helpful when searching the forums at genealogy.com since they don't seem to have a global forum search. To use the command there you would do this: site:genforum.genealogy.com Thomas.Pace This turns up results for Thomas Pace on boards other than the Pace family forum. Keep in mind that this search will only return results for "Thomas Pace" together and not "Thomas or Pace" seperately. I've found that in general google does NOT have all of the genforums indexed, but you should get results from different forums that will hopefully give you an idea of some new places to look. What if you wanted to search for more than one surname from a single site? To do that we use what is called the "pipe" character: | . This key will be found most likely above your ENTER key. To search for two different names, eg. Isaac OR James from my site you would use: site:bluntrazor.com Isaac | James (alternately you could do site:bluntrazor.com Isaac OR James but the "OR" must be capitalized) this gives us a list of pages where EITHER of those names appear. Finally, if you want pages that include both Isaac and James on the same page, but not together (not as a single name "Isaac James") you would do: site:bluntrazor.com Isaac and James For some reason google tells me I don't need to use the word and, but I always get fewer results if I don't use it. 4) How to get results from pages with a specific name in the web site title: When I first saw this operator I was a little sceptical of it's usefulness, but when I used it I was surprised. A web page's title is the text you find at the top of your browser in the blue bar. I think part of the usefulness of this method is that it is a way to further narrow down a search. Let's say you were looking for pages on Charles City County (Virginia). If you just googled Charles City county you get over a half million results, but if you set the search to only those pages with Charles City County in the title of the page it cuts that number down to just over 5,000 (still a lot, but better than a half million). To use this technique you do this: intitle:Charles.City.County Returns from the above are going to have Charles City County in that exact order in the title (see below if you don't want the words necessarily in that order) If you were searching for a very unique surname this could prove helpful: intitle:Blackwelder Blackwelder is my mother's maiden name and everyone with the surname is related without question. Remember, any words put into a web page's title are going to be important as the site is generally specifically about whatever the title says. If you wanted Charles City County to appear in the title, but not necessarily in that order you would do this: allintitle:Charles City County allintitle will catch variations such as a web page title "County of Charles City". Curiously, allintitle only returns 505 results versus the broader intitle:Charles.City.County which gives 5,000 results. So, it pays to try it both ways. 5) How to get results from pages with a specific name in the web site url (address): This one might seem like it's splitting hairs with intitle, but I always get interesting results when I use it. Again, let's say we are looking for Charles City County. To search for sites that have that county in the ADDRESS of the web site we use: inurl:Charles.City.County Again, this gives returns with the exact phrase Charles City County. I just used this one and found a site I had not come across before on 17th century Charles City County that did not appear when used the intitle command on it. Alternately you could use: allinurl: Charles City County to get addresses that don't have the words necessarily in that exact order. Another method with this operator is: inurl:Blackwelder Isaac which returns results that have "Blackwelder" in the url and "Isaac" somewhere in the web page (NOT in the url). 6) How to mix operators It is possible to mix any of the above operators, but generally I don't as I find I get decent results without having to do that. But, let's say you wanted to search only a specific site for Blackwelder in the title of any of the web pages: intitle:Blackwelder site:edu This will returns results with sites that have Blackwelder in the title of the web page, _BUT_ it will only search web sites that end in .edu (this would be colleges and other schools, no .com or .org or dot anything else but .edu). I'm not sure why you'd want to do this with a genealogy search, but if you do that's how it's done. Other combinations using any of the above are possible also. Believe it or not, I learned the majority of this by watching a video of a college kid on youtube showing how to illegally download music from google :) Good luck to all with your searches. I have been pleasantly surprised with a lot of the results I've gotten using these techniques and I know you will be also. Greg Matthews ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to NCHALIFA- request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message