Data Mining for Genealogy Data (Part 3)

In Part 1, I showed how to search the Rootsweb Freepages site using Google. There is another method of searching the Rootsweb Homepages and Freepages by doing:

1) Go to the Rootsweb.com site.

2) Click on the "SearchThingy" link in the list of "Search Engines and Databases"

3) That takes you to a page where you can input Keywords for your ancestor search. Say you input the keywords "Isaac Seaver Westminster"

4) You then get a list of 19 pages on Rootsweb Homepages and Freepages and the USGenWeb that contain the search keywords.

The problem here is that you cannot put names in quotes in order to find people named "Isaac Seaver," like you can in Google. You get web pages with all of the keywords somewhere on the page - it may be Isaac Smith and Fred Seaver. Putting a locality may help to narrow the search a bit.

Play with this a bit with your elusive ancestors and see if someone has submitted information about them.