Paul Carter
Advanced web searches
When we enter a search term such as “parish registers in kent”, in Google or Bing, the search engine will attempt to find web page content which matches all the words. We’re effectively specifying a Boolean search “parish AND registers AND kent”. This concept may be taken further to create more complex searches, combining ‘OR’ and even ‘NOT’ logic.
‘NOT’ is represented by the minus sign so to repeat this example search but excluding references to Canterbury, enter “parish registers in kent -canterbury”. This ‘not’ option may also be used to exclude a specific website from the results, for example “parish registers in kent -findmypast.co.uk”.