best search engines to find family prefer free ones?
c_l_m_21 asked:
My cousin is looking for her nieces and nephews, and wayward siblings. What are the best search engines to use? Are there any really good free public records search engines?
My cousin is looking for her nieces and nephews, and wayward siblings. What are the best search engines to use? Are there any really good free public records search engines?
Shirley T posted: 26 Mar at 9:48 am
Genealogy sites will not provide living people as a protection of their privacy and also due to identity theft.
I like Ancestry.Com for its records. Your public library might have a subscription to it.
They have all the U.S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet. They also have U.K. censuses.
But a person has to be very careful about taking as fact everything seen in family trees on any website, free or paid. The information is submitted by folks like you and me and mostly not documented or poorly documented. Even when you see the same information from many different submitters on the same people that is no guarantee it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying. Use the information as clues as to where to get the documentation.
Cyndi’slist.com has a multitude of websites, free and paid.
Ted Pack posted: 28 Mar at 7:53 am
We can’t tell what country you posted from. It is the most confusing thing Y!A does. Even if you go in through Y!A Austrailia, your Question pops up here in the USA.
Many people suggest zabasearch.com for living people, but it is for the USA. If you are outside the USA, edit your question and someone from your country may be able to help.
Whichever site you decide to use, use it on yourself first to see how well it does.
Depending on the name and how public they are, you can sometimes find people via an exact phrase search in Google; you use quotation marks. You need to try at least four forms of the name, and maybe more:
“Robert Lee”
“Lee, Robert”
“Bob Lee”
“Lee, Bob”
“Robert E. Lee”
“Lee, Robert E”
“Bobby Lee”
“Lee, Bobby”
“Robert Earl Lee”
“Lee, Robert Earl”
I found 15 out of the 100 people I searched for that way when I was on my high school reunion’s search committee.