Google Search: Using + , - , * and ? in genealogy searches

OK, let's continue the search for the mysterious John Smith. The previous hint initially found 228 million entries for the simple search for John Smith. That's a few more than anyone would be prepared to search through page by page. The we pared that down using "John Smith" and further by using "John Smith ~genealogy.

So here's the problem with "John Smith". If John is out there on the internet with either a middle initial or a full middle name, this simple search for "John Smith" with question marks isn't going to work to find them.

What do we do? The * and ? and other search tools are called "operators". The * ~ and ? are all operators as well as + and -.

If John MIGHT have a middle name, here's what you do: "John * Smith" ~genealogy. That search will return 208,000 responses, more that the 111,000 when we used only "John Smith". Why? Because the additional returns added all the entries that include something in between "John" and "Smith" in addition to "John Smith". Of course, I continued to add ~genealogy to keep the search focused on genealogy based search results.

I recommend using the * for a few reasons, even if you are 100000% sure that John's middle name was Morris. Why? Because in searching, you're subjected to how the indexing was done. Did the census taker hear "Morris" or "Norris". Or maybe the census worker got it right but the person who indexed the file read it wrong. Or it might even have been wrong in the first place. John Morris Smith more than likely isn't the person who told the census taker "John Morris Smith". Someone in the household or even a neighbor might have given the name as "John Alan Smith". It happens ALL THE TIME!!!

For those reasons and more, be aware that you're probably right... Let's say that John Morris Smith is, without even a shadow of a doubt, absolutely, positively your ancestor's correct name. You just can't be sure with how it was recorded then re-recorded then transcribed then indexed and then whatever!

Next, we'll start using the + and the - operators. Let's say you're ancestor was a pilot. You want to find the entries for the web sites about John Smith who was a pilot and not any others. Easy! Just add +pilot to your search. That way, the word pilot HAS to be in the web site somewhere. That doesn't mean you'll find John Smith the pilot, it just means that you're going to find all the web sites that mention John Smith AND mentions the word pilot. It's just a way to narrow your search to John Smith the pilot.

What about the - operator? A quick example is Abraham Lincoln. Try a search for "Abraham Lincoln" with the quotation marks. You should get about 44,200,000 returns. If you add the operator -president outside of the quotation marks, you'll reduce your returns to 27,400,000.

I'm using EXTREME examples here to show the dramatic differences when adding operators. The differences in your searches most likely won't be quite so profound, but should help you drill down to the person or persons or whatever data you're searching for.

Next we'll add a few more helpful hints such as OR and a few other quick tricks...

Stay tuned.