Using the internet to find people can be rewarding and challenging. At times information will flow like water and other times, trying to search the internet is like banging your head against a wall.
No matter who you are looking for, the first step in searching the internet begins not with Google but with pen and paper. It is important to write down basic information about the person(s) you are trying to find and have it next to you for reference purposes. Searching on the internet can pose some its own problems, the least of which is distractions. Focus on your key points of information:
Name
Date of birth
Place of birth
Current residence including county, city, and state
Age
Past residences
Here you have the very basic of the person. It might sound stupid to write all this down but once you start searching on Google it can get overwhelming. By cross checking your search results you will start to weed out the unnecessary information.
Start simple. Put in the person's name and current known residence in the Google search box. After hitting the return/enter button, thousands of results are going to pop up. If you are lucky, the person you are looking for will come up within the top few webpage results. More than likely, you are going to have to sift through the webpage's and this is where your list of personal information comes in handy.
Google will have a brief description of what the webpage includes with the person you searched for in bold. It will look something like this:
Search Results
1. Robert E. Lee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 - October 12, 1870) was a career United States Army officer and combat engineer. He became the commanding general of the ...
Henry Lee III - Arlington House - Lee (disambiguation)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee - Cached - Similar
Start by looking for the people names. Just scroll down the page, do not hit anything-just look at the names. Ok, you have some idea of what you are looking at, scroll back up to the top and start with the first listing. Does the name match? Does the place match the last known residence? Is there an age listed? Does that match your list?
If you can answer yes to at least two of these questions (I think that is a good minimum requirement) click on the web link.
At this point, I want to make side note about internet safety. Google tells you what the name of the website is right off the bat for example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee. This is a safe site to use, but some sites are not and clicking on them will download a virus or spam to your computer. (Spam is a form of advertising.) It is important to have updated virus-fighting software on your computer at all times. Google's information on each website result is a great way to check before you click.
One of the wonderful tools that came with your internet browser is the find function at the top of your tool bar. Look at the edit button, clink on it and down comes a box with commands. One of the commands is the find key. Click on the find key and a search box will appear. Type in the name of the person, within the webpage the name is highlighted. Just scroll down to the name and start reading.
At this point, as you read the page either the information will be what you searched for or not, if the information is useful print out the webpage. To do this go to File and scroll down to print or a short cut is CTRL P. At the same time I recommend bookmarking your webpage for future reference, place your mouse over the webpage and press the right button on the mouse, a box will appear with several things in it one of those is bookmark. Click on bookmark and another box will pop up with the website name and ask you to save or cancel, hit save. Your newly saved webpage is in your bookmark file, which is on the tool bar at the top of your web browser.
Google has several applications for doing a search. At the top of the search page is listed Web: Images Videos Maps News Shopping Mail more. These are other web search programs and can be just as helpful as a regular Google search. Click on Images and a blank page appears with a search engine box, you can type in the name of the person you are looking for and in moments, a ton of pictures will appear. You might get lucky and find your person, say Robert E Lee. Place the mouse over the picture and a larger image appears along with the name of the website. Left click on the mouse and the page will come up with the picture on top. You close the picture and behind it is the webpage where the image originated. Hopefully, you have found a useful site in your search.
One of the downsides to Google is the abundance of information available, it is easy to find a website perhaps for family tree information and get completely distracted for hours on a side search. At this point, I really recommend bookmarking the page and coming back to search later.
Another problem can be an erroneous search. Say you search for Robert Johnson Chicago IL phonebook listings with numbers for Robert Johnson in Chicago appears. Great that narrows things down. If you searched for Robert Johnson Chicago, a series of songs written by Robert Johnson come up, which you can listen to if you want, but unless you are a relative of the man who has become famous for "selling his soul to the Devil," you probably missed the target.
The first search landed you in Chicago with a list of current phone numbers. Here you can start phoning but before you do, take a look at the list next you. Does the numbers listed look at all like the right area for where Robert Johnson lived?
So let's look at the second search, which put you on a completely different track. This is where the head banging against a wall comes in. Google's search engine is trying to guess at what results you want. It goes in search of the most famous instances of Robert Johnson and it delivered. When Google brings back something way out of the range of what you want, it means you need to start with a different set of parameters for the search engine.
At this point, try different spellings of the name, search last name only, try the name with the place of birth, or even search just the place of birth, if it is a unique city maybe a family name is important to that specific locality.
Google searches are a great tool for finding enormous amounts of information. It takes time and patience to sort through the information but ultimately your search will be rewarded with success it just might not be in the way you expected.
