(Genealogy In Time Magazine – June 12, 2016)

To get the most out of any Google search for your ancestors, it is necessary to understand how Google works. An important consideration is to realize that Google runs different search engines in different parts of the world. For example, Google.com is the search engine for the United States, Google.ca is used for Canada, while Google.co.uk is the search engine for the United Kingdom. In total, there are close to 200 different Google search engines.

Most people don’t realize that the choice of Google search engine has a profound impact on the search results that are delivered to you. Choose the right Google search engine when searching for your ancestors and you will get good results. Choose the wrong one and you will almost certainly come up empty handed. In this article, we show you how to choose the right Google search engine.

The following simple example demonstrates the power of using the right Google search engine. Suppose you are looking for John Smith. Most people assume Google.com and Google.co.uk will give you the same search results for the same query. This is simply not true. Sometimes, the search results are not even close, as shown below.

Notice the difference between the two search results for the exact same search query? Now imagine what would happen if you were to perform a more complicated ancestral search on different Google search engines. The results are likely to be very different from each other.

Google runs many different search engines. Most of the search engines are organized by country for the following reasons:

• Most Search is Local: Over 80% of all Google searches are for local search results. Google knows that someone searching for pizza in Sydney, Australia does not want to see results for local pizza restaurants in (say) New York city.

• Distributed Computing: Google runs essentially the largest supercomputer in the world. It is so large that it can’t be run in one place. Google’s computer system is distributed over many server farms in various countries all over the world.

• Speed of Response: To minimize traffic flow over the global Google network, Google tries to match search queries to the nearest Google search engine.

• Language Issues: Different countries use different languages. When people enter a search query, they want to see the results in their own language.

• Regulation: Google has a need to meet many different government rules and regulations regarding content, access and privacy. This is best served by using local country search engines.

The first point (on the fact most Google search is local) is worth highlighting because it introduces a significant bias into ancestral search results. It works as follows: even though we live in a global world, most traffic across the internet still remains within the boundaries of a single country. For example, most emails are sent to people who live in the same country and most website visits are to websites in the same country.

It is possible to actually see the localization of global internet traffic in the diagram below. It visually shows traffic from Facebook, the most popular social networking website. A single line in the diagram represents the social link between thousands of people. The diagram is the cumulation of many of these lines showing the social interaction of hundreds of millions of people.

Another important consideration when searching for ancestral records is to recognize that Google is a general search engine designed to handle a variety of search requests. It is not optimized for specific genealogy searches. For that, use the free Genealogy Search Engine.

Before Google checks a search request, it fundamentally does not know whether the request is a record search for an ancestor, a search for a local restaurant, or a place to get the automobile fixed. Google does know, however, that a significant portion of search requests are for local results. This knowledge can be used to a genealogist’s advantage.

Genealogy records of ancestors are by definition archived records. Archived records have two important attributes:

• Archived records are usually found in the dusty back corners of the internet. It takes a powerful search engine like Google to find archived records. This is the reason why Google is the preferred search engine for genealogy (see How to Use Google Advanced Search for Genealogy).

• Archived records, even internet-based archived records, are also usually located within the country that created the record. For example, a birth record for someone born in France two hundred years ago is most likely to be found on a French website.

Thus, you should always use the Google search engine for the country where you expect to find your ancestral record. This is probably the single most important factor in determining your success in finding your ancestors with a Google search.

GenealogyInTime Magazine maintains the most complete list on the internet of Google search engines. In total, there are 192 Google search engines listed by country and region.

We suggest you bookmark this guide. As Google evolves, so does the list of Google country search engines. We will update this list periodically to reflect the latest changes from Google.

List of Google Search Engines by Country/Region