A Useful Tip to Help You With Your Ancestry Research
Using Google Command Operators To Improve Your Search Results
If you are going to do a Google Search and you want to get the best results, you should familiarize yourself with a couple
of very useful Google command operators, "allintitle" and "allintext". The "allintitle" operator returns search term results with matches found in the title of a file where "allintext" returns search results with each of your search terms found in the text of
the file. For instance, if you were looking for census documents from Clark County Washington for the year 1850, you could use the "allintitle" operator and your search might look like this:
This may return a lot of unwanted results, such as "Clark County Nevada". You could further filter your search results by
trying double quotes around Clark and County. This would still pull up "Clark County Nevada" and probably many more
Clark Counties. You might even try "Clark County Washington". Double quotes could have the reverse effect and return very few results. So you will have to experiment. The search string below could eliminate "Clark County Nevada" results by using the "-" operator. The "-" operator means, minus these results.
There is also a "+" operator that works the opposite way. You don't need to use the "+" operator with the "allintitle" command,
because it automatically searches for every search term you listed.
If you wanted to do a search for a census record for "Bill Jones" living in "Alameda County California" in 1910, you should use the "allintext" operator. It will return only matches from your search terms found in the text of a file. The "allintext" operator is a very good way of filtering unwanted results. In the example above, you should try putting last name first and inclosing last and first name in quotes. Most census records were recorded this way. You can also use the "-" and "+" operators with "Allintext. Below is an example search for "Bill Jones" living in "Alameda County California" in 1910.
