The ubiquitous search engine of Google, while itself isn't a Genealogy tool, is extremely useful for genealogy research. The video, below, shows how you can use Google for genealogy web searching. Among other things, the narrator explains how to directly search genealogy sites such as FamilySearch using Google.
However, that's only the start. Google Books is a gold mine of resources. To get to books, go to https://books.google.com/ . Once there, simply enter the subject you want to research. For example, if I wanted to search for stuff about Windham County, Connecticut, where many of my own ancestors were from, I could then search for "biographical history of windham county connecticut" and it would then bring up literally hundreds of relevant books, many of which are available in eBook form. Many of those are free eBooks. Well, in this case, instead of looking through the links, I personally would click on the "Any books dropdown menu and narrow things down to "free Google eBooks" which still gives me a half dozen highly relevant books published between 1874 and 1920. Establishing a free Google account would also allow you to save the best of these in your personal Google Library for future reference. If there's demand, I could update this post to explain how to do that. I have at least two dozen of these saved in my own Google Library that I frequently reference.
Using Google for Genealogy
However, that's only the start. Google Books is a gold mine of resources. To get to books, go to https://books.google.com/ . Once there, simply enter the subject you want to research. For example, if I wanted to search for stuff about Windham County, Connecticut, where many of my own ancestors were from, I could then search for "biographical history of windham county connecticut" and it would then bring up literally hundreds of relevant books, many of which are available in eBook form. Many of those are free eBooks. Well, in this case, instead of looking through the links, I personally would click on the "Any books dropdown menu and narrow things down to "free Google eBooks" which still gives me a half dozen highly relevant books published between 1874 and 1920. Establishing a free Google account would also allow you to save the best of these in your personal Google Library for future reference. If there's demand, I could update this post to explain how to do that. I have at least two dozen of these saved in my own Google Library that I frequently reference.
