Adding inurl to a Google Domain Search
As a follow-up to my blog post yesterday showing how to do a domain
search on Google, I would now like to demonstrate the use of the “inurl:”
search criteria, adding it to the domain search. I would like to do this so I can
search on a single state or county name, or other names, such as cemeteries,
census, directories, history, military, photos, or schools. When using “inurl:”, be
sure that it specifies a valid directory name on the web server, or a part of the
web page name. So, to change my search, ”site:ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ Yale”,
to only look for Yales in the state of Connecticut, I add the 2 character abbreviation
for Connecticut (ct) to ”inurl:”, giving ”inurl:ct”, because I know that
some Yales lived in this state, and now I’d like to find more of them, not just Elihu.
My Google search now becomes “site:ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ Yale
inurl:ct”, and it returns 17
results, which is a doable amount to drill-down on and research further.
Now I’d like to show you how to use the domain and inurl search criteria on another
site, namely FamilySearch.org. Because FamilySearch.org already
has an excellent search engine that we can use to research our ancestors, and its
relatively easy to use, we normally would not perform a Google domain search using
“site:www.familysearch.org”. However, when performing this domain search on Google,
and adding “inurl:search”, a total of 89,800
results are returned. When analyzing some of these results I saw that they could
be useful for my genealogy research if I add a surname, as I have done here:
“site:www.familysearch.org inurl:search Yale”, as it now returns 353
results. Then, adding a year, a first name, a state name, a county name, a city
name, or a cemetery name will further limit the search results and assist me in finding
what I’m looking for. In this case, I added the city name of “Hartford” and now have 12
results to look at. It is not possible to search on a city name or cemetery name using FamilySearch.org’s
regular and advanced search forms, so this Google search gives me results I could
not otherwise obtain.
I hope my explanations for using Google’s site and inurl search criteria will help
you do a better job at researching and finding your ancestors. In my next blog
post I will investigate and discuss using the “inurl:” criteria without the
“site:” criteria on Google. This can be useful when searching for more generic terms,
or specific city names, county names, or even surnames.
Popularity: 84% [?]
Using Google’s Domain Search
This is my first blog post on blog.genealogylocator.com,
our new blog here GenealogyLocator.com.
My name is Scott Turton and will go by the pen name of “familysearcher” on this blog.
I am one of the site editors responsible for locating the web-based family history
and genealogy content for GenealogyLocator’s search database.
In this post I will outline a worthwhile method to find genealogy and family history
data on the web by using Google’s vast search engine. I will show you how to use Google’s
domain search. Sometimes, genealogy related web sites and repositories are not well
integrated in terms of searching and finding what you are looking for. In these cases,
you can use google to help. Here is one of these types of web sites. It doesn’t seem
to be meant for user interaction at all, as its just a repository of genealogy-related
text files, categorized by state, county, and documentation type, such as cemeteries,
census, directories, history, military, photos, and schools. This is the URL, or web
address: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/
Now, if we know the exact county and state to look in, then there is not much of a
problem, but what do we do if we would like to search on all of the states…how would we
do that? Enter google, our friendy search engine. We can enter the following into
Google as search terms (without the double-quotes): “site:ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/”
and discover that google has indexed 2,810,000 results from this site alone! Here
is this
google search already linked for you. So, the next thing to do is to enter your
search term(s), putting a space between them and the “site” keyword there. One of
my ancestral lines is Yale, so I enter this name into the google seach box: “site:ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/
Yale” and click on the search button. Google returns 739 results that have the name
Yale in them, so that is a good start. Now I narrow down the search futher and enter
a first name: “site:ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ Yale Elihu”. This search returns
49 results and now I can start looking at each of them individually. As an aside,
Elihu Yale gave his name to Yale University by means of his large endowment, he was
the brother of a direct ancestor of mine.
This search will also work using years for census and birth/death dates, and other
names, for example, such as cemeteries, schools, or streets. You also may want to
use this search even though you know the county and state because you never know what
else you may discover.
Go ahead and try this google search method, it works very well on http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/,
and it should also work on other genealogy related sites. If you find a site this
method works well on, please post a comment here about it. Tomorrow, I will show you
how to use this google search method on a site that already has a search engine,
to find variations of results which you would not otherwise discover.
Popularity: 67% [?]
Cemeteries
Its been a couple of weeks since I last posted an entry so time to post something. Over the weekend I looked into the cemeteries project with usgenweb.
There are some local cemeteries next to me that I thought would make a nice weekend
project to get them photgraphed and recorded. Unfortunately, it looks like someone
beat me to it. It is nice to see that this project has really picked up and that it
is easier to find cemetery inscriptions on the internet. I did a search for one of
my relatives and was able to find his cemetery inscription in Utah along with his
wife. His wife had a tombstone picture, but he didn’t. I’m wondering if the tombstone
was destroyed. This might help explain why I didn’t find it when I took a trip to
view it.
Its amazing how much you can do with genealogy on the Internet these days. There are
quite a few ideas that I have of new tools that can help the normal user take advantage
of everything that is out there. If you haven’t tried it yet go to our genealogy
search engine and try out our genealogy search. We have hundreds of thousands
of genealogy pages indexed and the number keeps growing.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Department of Veterans Affairs Adds Maps to Online Gravesite Locator
The Genealogy Blog does a nice writeup about
the Veteran’s Administration Nationwide
Gravesite Locator giving a cemetery map to go with their gravesite locator. If
you have relative who are veteran’s this will be an exciting new feature for you.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Bangor Cemetery Listings Available
Earlier I had posted a press release about Massachusetts Jewish cemetary records being availble. Here is another press
release about Bangor, Maine placing their cemetery records online:
The city of Bangor
has a very nice Web site at www.bgrme.org. Of great
interest to genealogists is the database of interments for Pine Grove Cemetery on
Hammond Street Extension, Oak Grove Cemetery on Finson Road and Maple Grove Cemetery
at the intersection of Pushaw and Church roads.At the Web site, click on “Departments,”
then on “Public Works,” then on cemetery listings. The database is grouped by surname
into three categories: Abbott-Gould, Gowith-Parson and Parsons-Zirk.You don’t need to know the name
of the cemetery where your relative is buried, as the listings are combined.You may know that the city also
owns a portion of the cemetery adjacent to Mount Hope Cemetery, and that’s managed
by Mount Hope. To check listings for both those cemeteries, go to the Mount Hope Web
site at www.mthopebgr.com.
Here is a direct link to the database: http://www.bangormaine.gov/cs_inf_internmentlist.php
Popularity: 19% [?]
55,000 Massachusetts Jewish Burial Records Now Online!
NEWTON, Mass., June 20 /PRNewswire/ — For the first time, anyone can
perform genealogical searches online! So, if someone is looking for late
Uncle Ben on their mother’s side of the family, chances are they can locate
his burial records at any one of the Jewish Cemetery Association of
Massachusetts’ 100+ cemeteries. Just go to http://www.jcam.org, click
on “Services,” then click “Genealogical Search,” enter the name (or just the first
four letters of the last name) and Voila! With just the click of a button, his burial
location, name of cemetery and directions are displayed on the screen! Fantastic!
People are fascinated with their family histories making genealogy
one of the fastest growing popular research endeavors. Now the Jewish community has
access to JCAM’s 55,000 online burial database to fill in the blanks on family trees
or simply for visitation purposes. This is another way of reconnecting Jewish families
with their past and perpetuating the continuity of Jewish cemeteries well into the
future. Visit our website and try the genealogical search link. You may just find
someone you’ve been looking for!
Please contact Stanley Kaplan, Executive Director of the Jewish
Cemetery Association of Massachusetts at 617-244-6509 or for more information on the
work of JCAM, or visit their website at http://www.jcam.org.
Popularity: 26% [?]