Two New Search Engines to Help You Use Free Genealogy Search Methods to Make Your Personal Genealogy and Family History Easier

There are two new search engines on the block that have their own personalities and offer interesting potential for online genealogy researchers.

Before I mention them I want to refresh your memory with an existing online help page that shows how to use the Google search engine to look up your surnames. See my guide on how to do a surname search.

This covers some of the basics of my "Search Engine Secrets Made Easy for Genealogy Researchers" methods, which is one of the most popular topics that I teach and the course that gets the students so excited because they see results immediately.

It is important that you know at least the basics (as mentioned in the above surname search guide) because of the "research mindset" of these search methods before you move on to these next two new search engines.

For example. Searching for my Ragan ancestors in Duval County, Florida, I might do a search like this:

+ragan +born +duval

Remember that for later in this lesson...

Clusty, the clustering search engine

Of course, I'm half goofy, but "Clusty, the Clustering Search Engine," sounds like a jingle you might hear being sung on an old time radio show or something.

Clusty is interesting. It is still officially in Beta testing but it is a very powerful search engine with some unique features.

Go to the Clusty search engine.

• Type in the key word-- genealogy.
• Click on the "Cluster" button.

Note: Clusty will cluster by:

• Topics
• Sources
• URLs

I've found it to be the most useful (so far) when it clusters by Topics.

Look on the left at the link (which is a cluster) that says "Genealogy Resources" and click on it.

Examine the results.

Now, it is time to type in a new key word. Actually, it is a key word phrase because it will be two key words.

Type in-- free genealogy

Like before, look on the left and click on the link that says "Genealogy resources."

Remember that the results that you will see here are genealogy resources for the search "free genealogy."

As you see, Clusty conveniently "clusters" or categorizes genealogy topics and puts them into folders for you.

This is a good feature: Here's another example of how it could be used: Type in the location of a places where you want to travel to on vacation. This is wonderful. It does tons of the homework for you.

Try it. Type in-- hawaii

Also type in-- grand canyon

You can also click on the More link and open up more clusters.

See how it works? Pretty neat, huh?