Saturday, February 19, 2011

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Go For A Better Google Search

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings presents another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:


Your mission - should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  Go to genea-blogger Ramdy Majors website ( http://www.randymajors.com/).

2)  Add his blog to your RSS reader, if you don't have it already.

3) Read his blog post AncestorSearch using Google Custom Search - BETASee the link at the top of the page that says "AncestorSearch using Google Custom Search - BETA?"  Click on it.

4)  Test out his Custom Google Search form to help you find online information about your ancestors, especially for their marriages. 

5)  Tell us about your results - was this useful? Did you find something new?  How can Randy improve it?

6)  If you like Randy's Custom Search, add it to your Bookmarks or Favorites.

Thank you, Randy Majors, for creating a useful search capability and sharing it with all of us.  May your site receive many hits, and RSS subscriptions!


I tried this with my anchor couple, Clyde Taylor Dillman and Arminthea "Belle" Wiseman, married in Crawford County, Indiana in 1904.  This search widget really does filter the results!  I had to tweak a couple of times to get any hits at all, and then I did find one link to a website of a related line that includes part of mine.  One link.  And the information on this site is stuff I'd already had for many years.  Okay, this is my anchor couple, that I've been researching for a long time, I guess I didn't expect to find new data.

I tried again with my current most frustrating brick wall, Oscar Holt Williams and India (McQueen or Sandel/Sandahl) married in 1902 in Louisiana.  This one turned out to be a total stumper any way I could tweak the search input.  Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  I didn't expect to find anything on this couple, although I was hoping.

I tried a number of other couples, with virtually no useful results.  I hope you've had more luck with this than I have, but for me it's been a very frustrating experiment.  Even people I have already well documented were not found.  A few results turned out to be things I'd posted here and there.  I may give this another shot at some point, but for tonight I'm giving up on it.

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