1. Google for Genealogists

2. Google's mission statement “Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

3. As of March 2006, Google users can: search through approximately 11.3 billion web pages search through approximately 1.3 billion images Read millions of messages

4. If printed: the pages being indexed would result in a stack more than 700 miles high.

5. Google

6. So how does Google make money?

7. Google’s Motto Don’t be evil

8. Basic Concepts static web pages dynamic web pages

9. Google Searches Google will find most of the information that you and I post on the web, along with more information published by tens of thousands of other individuals and societies. Google will not find the information stored within the databases of the big sites: Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org and others.

10. Two popular types of search engines: searchable subject indexes –Yahoo is a searchable subject index full-text search engines –Google is a FULL TEXT search engine

11. Google searches by words Boolean logic Upper/lower case is ignored “Trivial words” are ignored: I, a, the, of, etc.

12. Boolean AND is Assumed A search of: John Smith Denver Colorado Is the same as: John AND Smith AND Denver AND Colorado

13. This can be changed by specifying Boolean terms "John Smith" AND "Denver, Colorado" (the AND may be omitted) This search will return results that contain both phrases

14. Other Boolean searches can help (John OR William) AND Smith AND Denver AND (Colorado OR CO) John Smith of Denver, CO John Smith in Denver, Colorado William Smith Colorado Mining Company in Denver, Texas

15. Genealogy challenges A search for Washington Harvey Eastman Will produce many “hits” relating to photography in Washington, DC as well as references to many people named Harvey or Washington!

16. Genealogy challenges A search for “Washington Harvey Eastman” (with the quote marks) Will not produce references to: –Washington H. Eastman –Washington Eastman –W. H. Eastman Etc.

17. Genealogy challenges You can use a minus sign, meaning “NOT” A search for: Washington Harvey Eastman –Kodak Should eliminate most references to photography

18. Google’s Special Syntaxes intitle: –Restricts your search to the titles of Web pages Example: intitle:”george bush”

19. Google’s Special Syntaxes inurl: –Restricts your search to the URLs of web pages Example: inurl:help Will return: http://www.eogn.com/helpfile.html

20. Google’s Special Syntaxes intext: –Searches only the body text, ignoring link text, URLs and titles.

21. Google’s Special Syntaxes inanchor: –Searches for text in a page’s anchors (links). Example: inanchor:”Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter”

22. Google’s Special Syntaxes site: –Allows you to narrow the search by a site or a top-level domain Examples: –familysearch.org –Ancestry.com –edu

23. Google’s Special Syntaxes link: –Returns a list of pages that link to the specified URL Example: link:http://www.eogn.com

24. Google’s Special Syntaxes cache: –Finds a copy of a web page that Google indexed even if that page is no longer available today or has since changed its contents. Example: cache:www.eogn.com

25. Google’s Special Syntaxes daterange: –Limits your date to a particular date or range of dates that a page was indexed. –Note #1: It is the date that the page was INDEXED by Google, not the page CREATION date! –Note #2: Date format must be in Julian dates

26. Google’s Special Syntaxes filetype: –May specify to search only for PDF, Word (DOC), PowerPoint (PPT), Excel (XLS) or other file types.

27. Google’s Special Syntaxes related: –Finds pages that are related to other pages. Example: related: www.eogn.com Returns a list of genealogy newsletters as well as a list of other newsletters owned by the owner of eogn.com.

28. Google’s Special Syntaxes info: –Provides a page of links to more information about a specified URL

29. Google’s Special Syntaxes phonebook: –Looks up telephone numbers Example: phonebook:remling syracuse ny

31. Advanced Search Query Word Input Language Filtering File Format Date

32. Advanced Search

33. Setting Preferences Language Filtering Number of Results Results Window

34. Setting Preferences

35. Search news groups

36. Need more information? http://www.google.com/support or http://www.google.com/help