It is wonderful that there are so many genealogical databases on the Internet! Each database has different content. Therefore, the information in each is also accessed differently depending on what the search engine allows. I have learned that it is important not to give up on your search, and I’ve learned that I can be smarter than the search engine.

Sherry Lindsay recently wrote about performing wildcard searches on Ancestry.com. The following is a case study in using search engines that focuses on using the search engine on GenealogyBank.com.

Wildcards can be used to search GenealogyBank.com, the largest newspaper archive. However, using wildcards may not always be the best way to access the record you need. Recently I was frustrated with some of the limitations of GenealogyBank.com’s search engine. Then a colleague guided me in other ways to search this database that were very effective.

I was looking for an obituary referenced in the Louisiana Biography and Obituary Index. GenealogyBank’s database did include the issue of the newspaper I needed, but the name fields (even using wildcards) did not lead me to the article I was seeking. I found obituaries listed only pages away from the one I was looking for. That was when I found limitation number 1.

Limitation 1: When looking at a specific image of a newspaper, the user cannot navigate to images of other pages within that issue – or any other image.

Suggestion 1: Limit your search by entering the exact date of the issue (in the date search field) and make sure you’ve already clicked the box for the state where the newspaper was published.

Having limited the search to the state and exact date of the issue I needed helped significantly. However, I still needed to figure out how to access the right page of the issue.

Limitation 2: The content on the database was indexed using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Therefore, wherever the type on the article was faint, the OCR technology did not recognize the words, thereby, excluding the faint words from the searchable text.

This was the case with the obituary I was looking for. The name of the decedent was faint.

Suggestion 2: Use the keyword search fields to limit your search keeping in mind some of the words in the article might not have been picked up by the OCR technology. When looking for an obituary your keywords might include: other names mentioned in the article; the words died, dead, death, obituary or notice; and the day of the week the event took place. These keywords could help lead you to the page containing the obituaries.

Final Suggestion: Most databases include search tips that can be very helpful. GenealogyBank has a link to search tips right below the middle initial field titled “learn more.”