Googling for genealogy

Well, ye socks, I got home from a long work week today to find one of my favorte genealogy periodicals waiting in my snail mail box.

Anyway, one of the articles had broader appeal than the study of family trees, so I thought I'd throw it in the dryer for your benefit.

When using the popular search engine GOOGLE, try these tips to generate the results you're really looking for:

* Put it in quotes. Don't just search for JOHN SMITH. Punch in "JOHN SMITH" instead.

* To narrow the results put a minus sign (-) in front of words you want to eliminate. For instance, continuing the above example, you could type: "JOHN SMITH" -Pocahontas. That would eliminate results about the Indian princess saving the intrepid English explorer.

* To add key words to the search parameters use either the plus sign (+) or the word AND (must be in all caps). For example: "JOHN SMITH" +Pocahontas. Or: "JOHN SMITH" AND Pocahontas.

* Throw in a wildcard by adding an asterisk (*). For example, if the John Smith you're looking for has a middle name, you might enter: "John * Smith". This would still give you all the "John Smith" results, but would also give you results for any page that included a phrase where the names John and Smith were only separate by one word/name.

* Remember that little squiggly line over the n that your Spanish teacher used (~)? If you put it in front of a word, you will get results not only for that word but for synonyms. For example, if you typed in: ~genealogy, you would also get results for family tree, roots, etc.

Good luck tracking down those elusive ancestors!