Research Help

The new CEO of FamilySearch, David Brimhall, is very pleased with the newest feature over on the right of the person page under the heading "RESEARCH HELP", where you can click on the "Search Records" link.  This will open up a new tab in FamilySearch.org with the results of a search for the person on your person page.  This new feature makes it very easy for you to add a source to one of your ancestors, who does not currently have any sources.  Making it easier for you to add at least one source to each one of your ancestors has been one of the general goals at FamilySearch.

The steps for adding a source are:
1. Click on one of the links in the search results list
2. Click on "Add to My Source Box" and "OK"
3. Then, go back to the tab where the person page is open and click on "Sources" (under "Details")
4. In the sources section , click on "Attach from Source Box"
5. Then, over on the right in the Attach column, click on "Attach" and explain why you are attaching this particular record to this person
6. Then, in the upper left under the FamilySearch logo, click on the "Go to" link that takes you back to that individual's person page and click on "Sources" again
          :Before you do that, you might want to check the little box to the left of that source and click on the now-bolded "Move" button to move that source out of the Home area into a folder you have created for that source.  Or, you could even delete that source from your list of sources - it will remain linked to that person.
7. Then, click on the source that you have just added and on the "Tag" icon to connect this source to various vital records
8. Then, click on "Close" and again on "Close" to close the sources section

When you add a new person to the database, you would follow the same steps for including sources for that ancestor, who is a person with the same surname as a person in your pedigree family, who lived on the same planet (well, the new guideline says "geographic area").

Google site switch

A "site switch" is a method used in a Google search to limit the search to only a specific website.  It is sometimes referred to as a "command option" and would probably only be used to search a website of interest that does not have a built-in search feature.  To clarify, you would probably not use this approach to search familysearch.org, or people.mnhs.org, or werelate.org because each one of these three genealogy-related websites has its own search feature.  On the other hand, most blogs do not have their own built-in search feature.
In general, the search command is in three parts;
   you would start the command with the topic or surname that you are searching for,
      followed by a space and "site:",
         followed by the specific website that you have chosen to search.

To try out using the command, go to the Google website (URL line with https://www.google.com) and type the following three parts into the search box ("Quass site:blog.eogn.com" (without the quote marks, of course)) and press the enter key or click on the Google Search button.
Because Dick Eastman's popular genealogy blog does not have a search feature, this command option limits the search to just his blog website.

You can read more about this topic by doing a Google search for "site switch" or "command option" which might lead you to

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/money/consumer/data_doctor/the-google-%27site%3A%27-switch---how-to-use-google-to-search-websites-that-don%27t-have-a-search-option

or to

http://www.rankpanel.com/blog/google-search-parameters/.