How to get relevant people searches for a common word

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Permalink Reply by Sean K on February 26, 2010 at 8:55am

I suspect if you are using the dark art of googling that you'll need to search for two words at the same time i.e. 'windmill surname', 'windmill obituary', '"John Windmill"' etc. And if you are searching specific genealogy focused websites (e.g. Genesreunited, or Familysearch) then you will be likely to come across Windmill as a surname, rather than occurrences of wind driven mills.

Have you considered setting up a "My Surname is Windmill" Facebook group, or similar?

Permalink Reply by Sidney Wood on February 27, 2010 at 7:03pm

I know the problem, especially with newspaper archives. I search for Sandow and get all the racing results at Sandown back to domesday. I have no solution yet, especially if you're fishing. If the search is more specific you can combine terms to narrow the field, but even windmill+probate would probably bring you all the bequeathed mills in the country. But combining carefully selected terms is one way to go. I also find that once you're through the good results for combined terms, I still find interesting stuff n the near misses and go through those too, until the junk becomes too tedious.

Permalink Reply by Heather Buttle on February 28, 2010 at 12:53pm

Thanks for the reply. Most interesting :)
I didn't think I would be alone but thought it worthwhile finding out others solutions