Googling --- GO DO IT !!!!

[Nick Carver]

Can I also put in a plug for Altavista, which in my experience, seems to throw up a few different options. It is certainly better for UK names.

Downside of Googling - my Carvers come from Hull. Google 'Carver Hull' and you get thousands of people talking about their boats. Carver is a make of motorboat in the USA. You just have to be careful about what qualifiers you use if you have a common name.

[Berlin-Bob]

Thanks for that, Nick !

I've just tried it with four names from my tree.  Nothing new (in a very quick, cursory search)

BUT, all searches brought up my web-site, including one name with 3 out of 4 references to the web-site whereas Google hadn't found anything at all !!!  Very impressed !!!

Bob

[Berlin-Bob]

Here's a variation:

I have an "intelligent" web counter on my site: amongst other things,
it tells me - not who - but where people are calling from.

I have had several visits from people looking for images of names, in google and yahoo.

All the pictures on my site (and presumably everybody elses's) are also indexed on search machines,
so try searching for images of your "names"

Bob

[janan]

Yes Nick, Carvers are a problem as you also get all those people busy wood-carving. My Noons and Loves cause me problems too - search Horsley Noon and it's surprising how many meetings there are in Horsley at 12 noon
Will have a go with Altavista
Cheers Jan

[Heather D]

Hey, it finally worked for me 

Only this morning I got the birth certificate that confirmed my 3 x g grandmother as Harriet Eastup of Linton Kent. Being an unusual name, I decided to google and came up with a Texas newspaper report of an Adolphus Eastup, killed in a railway accident in 1906, leaving four children.

Knowing Harriet had a nephew Adolphus, I found his passage to the US in 1876 and then, being sure I must have American cousins, I searched Rootsweb and found a 4 year old message from one of his descendants.

So I mailed with fingers crossed, fully expecting a bounced mail, but no ...she replied within the hour and is thrilled to find an English cousin.

It works!!!

[kmo]

- search Horsley Noon and it's surprising how many meetings there are in Horsley at 12 noon

If you search for Horsley Noon with quotation marks around it,  ie "Horsley Noon" you should just get results  with the  words adjacent to each other.

[DianaM]

Tricks with googling phrases:

"Firstname middlename lastname"
"Firstname initial lastname"
"Firstname lastname"
"lastname firstname"

Any of the above plus:
place names
spouses surnames
etc.
Or just lastname + place - I've had good luck with some of my rarer surnames with this one.

I agree with the above, also use the old-fashioned abbreviations eg "Geo" for George, "Jas" for James etc. - brings up a lot of directory entries.  A google search on my ancestor as "Cavill, George" brought up a cemetery record in the US together with his wife.  I'd known that several of their children emigrated but not that their parents went too, in their 60's!  then a kind rootschatter did a census search and found them living with their daughter Miranda - solving my mother's grandmother's enigmatic remarks of "Aunt Miranda who went to America"!  And then a search on "Cavill, Geo" brought him up prior to departure as a "clothier and emigration agent" which now made sense!

Also attach a "UK" to a search if necessary, and either "genealogy" or "family history" to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

[kmo]

If you use www.google.co.uk instead of www.google.com, there is an option of just searching UK sites.

[hlbradd]

also,

if you want the search to omit a certain term use - in front of that word.

i.e. Just searching Bradd brings up so much stuff I don't want - i.e. nude pin-ups of Mr Pitt,  etc,    but using  -Pitt cuts that all out.

Helen