Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Genealogy In Time Advanced Genealogy Search Engine

I read the recent press release highlighting the Advanced Genealogy Search Engine provided by the Genealogy In Time online magazine.  The publicity says, in part:

"GenealogyInTime?, a free online genealogy magazine, has launched a major new genealogy search engine. Called the Advanced Genealogy Search Engine, it is a stronger and more powerful alternative to traditional searches using Google. The Advanced Genealogy Search Engine not only searches over 1.2 billion historic source records, it is fast, convenient and free."

That sounds interesting - historic source records, more powerful than Google searches, fast, free.  Wow.

The Advanced Genealogy Search Engine page is here.  I input my favorite ancestor, "Isaac Seaver", in the Search field in quotes, and received over sixty matches, including:

*  An article in the CVGS Newsletter I wrote about GenForum message boards (on www.rootsweb.ancestry.com).
*  Many entries in digitized books on http://www.archive.org/.
*  Several entries in the WorldConnect family tree database on www.rootsweb.ancestry.com.

Hmmm, when I click on the next 10 matches, I get only five matches, and one is the same as in the first list.  I tried to go back to the first ten matches, and the system kicked me back to the Genealogy in Time home page where I had to select the Advanced Genealogy search Engine again, fill in the search field again, and try to get more results.  FAIL. 

From what I can tell, the only websites that the "Advanced Genealogy Search Engine" searches are www.rootsweb.ancestry.com (message boards, mailing lists, websites, WorldConnect) and http://www.archive.org/

Are those really "1.2 billion historic source records?"  Perhaps 1.2 billion is the number of names in the Worldconnect database plus the number of website pages, message board and mailing list messages, and Archive.org book pages?  Are these really "historic source records?"  Not in my book - family tree data and name/date/place/relationship assertions are hardly historical "source records."

Is this search "stronger and more powerful alternative than traditional searches using Google?"  Give me a break!  Google searches the entire Internet for the search terms requested.  A search for "Isaac Seaver" yields 903 matches, including many to my own blog where I've written extensively about Isaac Seaver.

Nice try, Genealogy In Time, but no cigar here.  Words mean something - "source records" means something.  "stronger" and "powerful" mean something. 

I hope that they modify their publicity to reflect the reality of the search.  It would help genealogy researchers to know which websites are actually searched by the Advanced Genealogy Search Engine.  It would help genealogy researchers if they would fix their search engine and website so that users could see all of the search matches.

I do appreciate, subscribe to and read the Genealogy In Time newsletter, and find their articles and lists of updated and new databases to be very useful. 

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