FamilyTreeSeeker.com






Search Help

Search Help

Tip for beginners

There are not many data available from the last 100 years. Searching for your grandparents or great-grandparents is more likely to be successfull than searching for your parents.

At least you have to fill in something in the field 'Surname'.

When you fill in more words in a search field, these words have to be literally so in the database to give a result. So using quotation marks makes no sense.

The option 'Method' works for the field 'Surname'. For the field 'Given Names' always the method 'Begins with' is used and for the field 'Place of Birth' always the method 'Contains' is used. Each genealogist has his own way to enter topographic names (towns, counties, states, etc.). Therefore it is not really possible to search effectively on places via the method 'Equals' or 'Begins with'.

If you are searching for a person without a 'Given Names', 'Surname' or 'Place of Birth' in the database, you can fill in 'xxx' in the concerning field.

You can confine the search result by clicking on the green plus sign, the orange equal sign or the red minus sign for each name. These signs have the following functions:
Search in all family trees.
Search in the family tree with this person only.
Search in all family trees except the tree with this person.

The option 'Family Trees' gives instead of a persons list a list of the family trees which contain persons that meet the search criteria. When you click on the URL of a tree in that list, you get a list of the persons in that tree that meet the search criteria.

When you search from the searchbar of your browser or from a toolbar (ex. the Google Toolbar), there is only one search field available. But you can still use different fields via some special codes in your search query:

  • sn: Surname
  • fn: Given Names
  • bd: Two years of birth with a hyphen (-) in between
  • bp: Place of Birth

Example: sn:Veldman fn:Gerrit bd:1900-1950 bp:Zwolle (Click here to see the result)

FamilyTreeSeeker.com in the Firefox searchbarNB - There is no space allowed between a code and the first corresponding keyword!

This method is especially useful when searching from the Firefox or Internet Explorer 8 searchbar, because the codes then are shown and can be chosen as suggestions (see image).

© 2006-2024 Gerrit Veldman