Genealogy Today gets a Haircut and a Shave for 2012

Well, maybe a mini-facelift too (but I'll never tell). This weekend the search engine at Genealogy Today was released with a faster, simpler version that (and here's the key benefit) offers better results. In addition to the search improvements, the home page was redesigned and the site navigation was improved.

The improved search combines free and paid resources into a single result set, highlighting new and updated items. External resources are clearly identified with "Web:" before their titles, and free items announce themselves with a Free! indicator. There's also a new line at the top of the search results that displays the criteria used in the search. And (did I mention that) the Genealogy Today search is now much faster, more consistent between the different types of records and offers better results (for special cases and name variations).

Released with the search engine (as you might expect) is an improved search form that allows you to filter free/paid, local/external and restrict "fuzzy" name logic. The new form also does a better job of keeping track of what you've just searched on, and as you drill down into the databases, offers options to reverse direction and expand your search.

Still in the works... support for searching alternate names (e.g. maiden, married, nicknames, typos) and a real-time checker for external resources to better handle moved/dead links. And, of course, there will lots of new data added during 2012!

While the search engine may not look all that different on the surface, it drives a lot better... so go ahead and take the improved search engine for a test drive... http://www.genealogytoday.com/