Beating the Search Engines and Inside "Who Do You Think You Are"

The ProGenealogist Blog this week, "Be Smarter Than a Search Engine," provides tips for combating the limitations of some search engines. It is hard sometimes to find just the right keyword; in many cases, you know the information should be there, but how to get to it is another question. And we'd all like to learn more about how to pull out those hidden bits and pieces we don't even know about.

As a side note, ProGenealogists in its March 3 blog revealed the company's involvement in the NBC production of "Who Do You Think You Are," and ProGenealogist CEO Natalie Cottrill appeared in the first episode with Sarah Jessica Parker. The blog offers a video of this first segment and indicates it will be posting "individual webpages for different episodes providing “behind-the-scene” insights that will better explain just how we found the clinching document or story that was presented in the show."

What I like about these webpages, covering two episodes, so far, is that it does provide some insight into the research process that can help others doing genealogy. And, if you're lucky, the show might touch on something relevant to your own genealogy -- maybe you had a Gold Rush ancestor and did not know "as many as ten people died for every mile traveled along the route."