Names which cause problems with searches....

[peterfelgate]

Why do I keep finding surnames that are common words and which cause havoc when searching genealogy sites as they so often are used in the text of messages?  So far I have Day and Branch, and Moth keeps finding "mother"!

Anyone else have similar examples?

[JayG]

Know exactly what you mean.

I'm looks for Falls, Parrott, Sparrow, Sivers to name a few!

Jay

[jericho]

I have a similar problem with the surnames Street and Shorter.   

[aghadowey]

I have Wood, Hunter, Workman, Feld, Smyth, Clyde, Gardner, Dexter, Pidgeon, Arthur, Kane, etc. all of which bring up loads in any search engine so search using quotes for full name or surname and place, etc.

[Paul Caswell]

My worst are Drury ... I cant get rid of references to Drury Lane!

Caswell ... oddly, Caswell County is very difficult to exclude.

Cousins ... almost impossible.

Paul

[jrt]

 i know exactly what you mean

 black and then theres the wilsons!!!!!

[gazania]

I can add Lane.  The surname Alderman is not all that common but just as hopeless for a Google search unless I can add a qualifier. Gazania

[nickgc]

As stated earlier, use quotes if you know a first name: "Joseph Drury" shouldn't result in hits for Drury Lane.  Also, I have found combining the word genealogy or family with confusing names helps to limit the number of false hits.  You can either do this with or without quotes:  Clyde family scotland  Or "clyde family" scotland; "Street genealogy".

Look at the Google advanced search to see what you can do.  You can do Boolean searching (AND OR NOT) with AND being default.  So if you know first names of some relatives you can do a search like, "Elias Street" OR "Joseph Street" OR "Matilda Street".   You can also search drury aberdeen NOT "drury lane".

Hope this helps.

Nick

[dbath]

If it makes you feel better, I also have Days, but the tree includes Bath (which can lead wrong directions), Church (thankfully leading the other direction), as well as directions (North, West), food (Rice, Trout), and countries (England, French, German, Irish), but my worst are those names that are common first names:  Bryan, Boyd, Dennis, George, Howard, Jack, James, John, Joseph, Kelly, Lee, Lewis, Matthew, Ray, Stanley, Stewart, Todd, and Wade (which show every person with these first names).  Even when you go to a site that only searches names, it is almost enough to cause despair.  There should be a law against it!