When Researching Your Family History
Don’t Overlook the Minor Search Engines.
The reason some family tree websites, particularly
those created by amateur web designers are not found, is
because they are not optimized for search engine
indexing and ranking.
The reason some family tree
websites, particularly those created by amateur web
designers are not found, is because they are not
optimized for search engine indexing and ranking. Some
larger engines will not index websites that do not have
Meta tags or proper title and headings. If they are
indexed, such sites will suffer through very poor
ranking in the search results. They may even be
impossible to find.
Almost 80% of family tree websites submitted to
Genealogy Search Australia do not have Meta tags or
proper title and headings. They also often do not have
inbound links from other genealogy web sites. These
links can improve the ranking in the search results.
This is very disappointing as the owners of such sites
will not get the visitors that they should. Search
engines also use these links to find the web site for
indexing.
The smaller genealogy search engines usually use a human
editor to include the web sites in their index. This
allows the editor to add Meta tags to the listing to
improve the sites ranking and “findability”. Obviously
the smaller engines have less sites indexed which means
that you will have fewer pages of search results to scan
while looking for sites with clues to your family
history. This can actually be an advantage compared to
the million page results you may get from the major
search engines.
The search words and phrases you use when searching can
also help identify sites of interest for you. But
remember, the search engine will only identify web sites
that include your search words in the meta tags, title,
headings and possibly page content. So by using detailed
search phrases you run the risk of not finding the web
sites that have been poorly designed.
If you are searching by surname, do not be disappointed
if your search results do not show that name in the
title or description. By showing that web site in the
search results, the search engine is indicating that the
name appears somewhere and you should open the page and
examine the content closely. Your name could be amongst
those being researched by the website owner.
Is it time consuming? It certainly is, as all
genealogists and family history researchers will attest.
But you could be rewarded by finding the information you
need on one of the many obscure, poorly optimized family
history websites that are “on the web” but not easily
found.
Hopefully this article may encourage amateur web site
owners to optimize their web sites so that they can be
found, thus assisting themselves and others in their
family history research.
Jim Hammond is a Family History Researcher who has
created the free Genealogy Search Australia search
engine and directory to assist new and experienced
genealogists and family historians. Please visit
www.hammondfamily.id.au for an example of an
optimized family tree website.