52 Weeks To Better Genealogy - Challenge #14

Week 14: Use a different search engine for your online genealogy research. Google is quite popular, but other search engines may provide different results. Try Yahoo! Search (http://search.yahoo.com/), Bing (http://www.bing.com/), Ask.com (http://www.ask.com/), Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com/), and even Clusty (http://clusty.com/). Pick an unusual surname and search it in different engines. Make note of the top 10 page returns for each. If you’re a genealogy blogger, share your observations on this experience.

For this challenge I used Google, Yahoo, Ask, Bing, Dogpile and Clusty along with the search term "Benjamin Brane" Maryland. I was surprised at the different results I got with each site. Google, by far, provided me with the most relevent matches and the largest number. I decided to compare the top 5 for each site. The results are below:

Google Top 5

1. History of Frederick County Maryland, Volume 1
2. Rootsweb.ancestry.com/database
3. Family Search.org/Brane
4. Rootsweb.ancestry.com/database
5. Alkire.org/gen/Ohio

Yahoo Top 5 (Only found 3)

1. Rootsweb message boards/wabash county/Indiana
2. Rootsweb.ancestry.com/database
3. Rootsweb.ancestry.com/database

Dogpile Top 5 (Only found 3)

1. Intelius People Search
2. Target.com
3. Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution

Ask Top 5 (Only found 2)

1. Alkire.org/gen/Ohio
2. Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution

Bing Top 5 (Only found 3)

1. Rootsweb.ancestry.com/database
2. Archives of Maryland Online
3. Rootsweb.ancestry.com/database

Clusty Top 5

1. Rootsweb.ancestry.com/database
2. Rootsweb message boards/wabash county/Indiana
3. Rootsweb.ancestry.com/database
4. Archives of Maryland Online
5. Greta's Genealogy Blog

The results provided some surprises such as the Archives of Maryland Online and the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, two sites I had not visited before. I was also taken aback at those that seemed to make no sense at all such as Greta's Genealogy Blog, the Intelius People Search and Target.com! The History of Frederick County Maryland was found in google books as was a book on Landmark History of the United Brethern Church (found as #6 on google search). I need to add both those books to my google library.

Thank you, Amy, for another great challenge! I've found two sites I need to take a better look at and two books to add to my google library!