Re: Altavista better than Google for genealogy searches

Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Thu, 15 May 2008 07:50:42 -0500, "Texas Gen" <texas.gen@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> 
>> Wow----I used Altavista and you are right.  When you are doing a
genealogy 
>> search maybe use both and whatever other good search engines? 
> 
> The thing about Altavista is that my Growden page is specifically about
the
> family history and genealogy of that particular family, so if someone is
> looking for that, it should come up in the first page or two.
> 
> On Altavista, it came up with a page of relevant search results. 
> 
> On Google that particular page still hadn't come up after 17 pages.
There were
> quite a lot of pages dealing with papers by a neurologist Dr Growdon who
> referred to the family history of his patients and research subjects --
fair
> enough. There was some stuff I could use, even on page 16 and 17. 

So by your own admission, Altavista eliminated many sites that google 
shows you (to make up your own mind) and tells you those that are 
relevant to your search. Google is better as it lets me control more 
data. Is there a setting on Altavista that lets you increase your hits ? 
With google, you can easily add -Dr. Growdon with the minus sign to cut 
out all those hits. But I would not do that out of hand.

Specifically, neurologist Dr Growdon could easily have an email listed 
publicly and would not mind sharing family tree info. Altavista
cut that out as un-needed, when many genealogists contact people out of 
the blue, with the same last name, to see if they are cousins and to see 
if they have family tree info.

Jonathan M.