Origins.net launches 'the search engine for genealogy'. 2 September 2002 Origins.net (www.origins.net), the major source of key Scottish and English genealogical data on the web, is pleased to announce a new service, Origin Search (http://www.originsearch.com). Origin Search is a specialized web search engine for genealogy and costs only $5 for 24 hours unlimited use. Using search criteria designed specifically for family history research, Origin Search addresses a major difficulty in genealogical research: how to find nuggets of information of real value to your research which may be buried deep within millions of web pages. There are many hundreds of millions of genealogical records scattered around the world-wide web, but even the best general purpose web search engines, such as Google or MSN search, will not find more than a fraction of these records or will require manually filtering a huge amount of irrelevant results. Origin Search allows users to locate ancestors' information using structured searches based upon events from marriages to mentions in ships' passenger lists, with grouping of results by region, and with a proprietary mechanism for retrieving alternate name spellings, NameXT. Unlike many other genealogy servic! es, including Origins.net's own English Origins, Origin Search is not limited to specific collections of genealogical databases or to a small collection of web pages but locates genealogical information over the entire web. Origins.net founder and CEO, Ian Galbraith said: "We believe that Origin Search is a primary example of the future direction that the search engine industry will follow. Many search engines are beginning to offer specialist services, such as news search, in response to users' needs. Genealogy is the second biggest use of the Internet but to date there has not been a "Google for genealogy". For less than the price of the bus fare to the local library, family history enthusiasts have access to one of the most sophisticated search tools in the world, from their own home". The launch version of Origin Search locates records containing over 340 million names. Searching for names in unstructured data A researcher may be looking for records referring specifically to the immigration of someone into the United States; a traditional search engine would return all mentions of this name from genealogical information of any sort to a basketball score from a team player. Origin Search only returns information which is relevant to family history research, and regardless of how the name appears on the web page - eg "John Smith", "Smith, John" or "J. B. Smith". Searching for ancestors has long been a notoriously difficult task since people have often used abbreviations and spelling variations or changed their name when emigrating to another country such as the United states. Origin Search includes another unique and particularly powerful feature: NameXT - the most powerful surname variant search tool available. This allows searchers to find far more records of possible interest than would be possible any other way. NameXT NameX, a key features of Origin Search, is one of the most powerful and sophisticated search tools available on the Web. Searching using the NameX feature locates a wider range of genuine variants of a person's name than any other software. NameX is vastly superior to the widely used Soundex, which is really not well adapted for searching for name variants. For example, in a list of 55 million surnames NameX identified 147 highly plausible variants for the surname Wilson; Soundex identified 1185 "variants", of which nearly 90% are unlikely in the extreme (eg Wahlgamath, Whilesmith, Willigenburg). NameX works both with surnames and with forenames, and allows forename diminutives often being quite different from the "real" forename. For example, searching on Margaret will also find Marg, Mgt, Marg't, Maggie, Peggy, etc. Users pay a licence fee for use of the Origin Search software: a 24 hour licence costs $5 (£3.20), a 14 day licence $15 USD (£9.60). Users search as much as they like during the licence period. Our free Irish Origins (www.irishorigins.com) service is based upon the same software and functionality as the new service. Prospective users of Origin Search can check thoroughly the functionality and quality of service they will receive before needed to commit to any payment for Origin Search. (This is in contrast to Origins.net's premium pay-per-view services - eg English Origins - where payment relates to the amount and value of the information retrieved.) Origin Search versus other search engines A 'name only' search carried out on a search engine such as Google may return a large number of web pages, many of which will be irrelevant to genealogists. For example, searching the surname John Gollop using Google returns 12 web pages containing this name. But only one of these pages relates to genealogical data (www.execulink.com/~fbax/FamTree/JoanSmith.htm). Searching the same name with Origin Search returns 17 pages, all from genealogical web sites and containing information relevant to family history researchers. . About Origins.net Origins.net's business is the provision of high quality genealogy services on the Internet. Founded 1997, Origins.net has been the pioneer of pay-per-view web databases: Scots Origins, launched 1998, was the first service providing Internet access to governmental genealogical records, and was the first pay-per-view service of any kind on the web; English Origins (in association with the Society of Genealogists) followed in 2001. Origins.net has a two-fold strategy: to work with the custodians of valuable and unique genealogical material to make their material publicly accessible via the web; and to develop specialised search services to simplify searching for genealogical data on the web generally. In contrast to most "dot com" companies, Origins.net was profitable from the start. Praise for Origins.net "an absolutely central resource for all genealogists..." (The Good Web Guide): "[Scots Origins is] a model consumer website with clear instructions and an excellent demo." (The Herald) "I REALLY like your new service, Origin Search, and particularly the drop down name area, which tells me what names are being searched. Soundex never seems to work for me, but this is great. I also appreciate the breakdown of hits into geographic area. Thanks for this great tool" (Origin Search user) "I was impressed with the speed to view 470 pages for one name and timespan. This new service will be of particular benefit to our American cousins and anyone who is new to searching for their family's history" (Origin Search user) Contact: Jane Hewitt Origins.net 12 Greenhill Rents Farringdon London EC1M 6BN Tel: +44 (0)20 7251 6117 pr@origins.net This e-mail is intended for the named addressee only. It may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you have received this message in error, please let us know and then delete this message from your system. You should not copy the message, use it for any purpose or disclose its contents to anyone.