Free training · Using FamilySearch · Intermediate · 20 min
Search Like You Mean It
Why no results almost never means no record: searching with less, wildcards, collection filters, and browsing the unindexed images that a name search can never find.
Free FamilySearch search training from Stuck in the Branches: searching with fewer fields, dropping the surname, wildcards for spelling variants, filtering by collection and place, reading a collection description, and browsing unindexed record images the way archive research has always worked.
What you will learn
- Treat an empty result as a problem with the search, not proof of nothing.
- Find a family by searching with fewer fields, or none of the surname.
- Use wildcards to catch every spelling a clerk invented.
- Read a collection description before deciding a record does not exist.
- Browse an unindexed collection page by page, the way archive research works.
The full written guide
Chapter 1. Welcome
No results is a statement about your search.
Search Like You Mean It.
Welcome back. You have run a search and found nothing, and concluded the record does not exist. Usually it does. This guide is about the difference between typing a name into a box and actually searching a collection.
Nothing Found Usually Means Searched Wrong.
The first thing to accept is that no results is a statement about your search, not about the archive. Names were spelled by ear, indexers misread handwriting, and large parts of the collection are not indexed at all. All three of those are fixable.
Chapter 2. Search with less
Fewer fields, no surname, wildcards, and the wife.
Give It Less, Not More.
The instinct is to fill in every box. Do the opposite. Each extra field is another chance to exclude the right record over a detail that was recorded differently. Start with a surname and a place, look at what comes back, and narrow only when there is too much.
Search Without a Surname.
When a surname is being mangled beyond recognition, drop it entirely. A given name, a narrow date range and a small place will often return a short enough list to read by eye. This is the single technique that finds the most supposedly missing families.
Use Wildcards for the Spelling.
A search supports wildcards: a symbol that stands for any run of letters, and one that stands for a single letter. So a surname can be searched as its first few letters followed by a wildcard, which catches every variation the clerk invented at once.
Search the Wife, or the Children.
If a man is invisible, search for his wife under her maiden name, or for a child. Household records list everybody, so finding any one member of the family finds them all. This also works when the man's name is so common that his own search is useless.
Chapter 3. Work the collection
Filters, and reading what is actually in it.
Filter by Collection, Not Just by Name.
The results can be narrowed by record type, by place and by date, and you can also go into a single collection and search only inside it. Searching one census year for one county is a completely different exercise from searching everything, and it is far more likely to work.
Browse the Collection Itself.
Every collection has a description page that tells you what is actually in it, which years, which places, and how complete it is. Read it. Half of all failed searches are for records that were never filmed, or that cover a different parish than the one you need.
Chapter 4. The unindexed images
Why search cannot see them, and how to browse.
A Lot of It Is Not Indexed.
This is the part most people never learn. A large share of FamilySearch's images have never been typed up into a searchable index, which means no name search will ever return them. They are not hidden, they are simply not indexed, and you can still look at them.
Browsing Images Is Normal Research.
Browsing means choosing the place, the record type and the year, then turning the digital pages yourself, exactly as you would a book in an archive. It is slower and it is how real research has always been done. Most of the brick walls in the other series fall this way.
Narrow It Before You Browse.
Browsing works when you know the parish and a range of a few years. Get there first with everything else you have: a census, an obituary, a marriage record naming the church. Then an hour of page turning is enough. With no narrowing, browsing is a hobby, not a method.
Chapter 5. Searching from your tree
Prefilled searches, and treating hints as clues.
Search From Inside the Tree.
When you search from a person in your tree, FamilySearch fills in what it already knows about them. It is the fastest way to start a search, and the results come with an obvious route to attaching whatever you find straight onto the right person.
Record Hints Are Only a Start.
The blue hints are generated by matching, and matching is not proof. Review each one against what you know before attaching, and dismiss the ones that do not fit. An unreviewed hint attached in a hurry is the most common way a wrong person enters the shared tree.
Chapter 6. The search you will run again
Write down what worked.
Save the Search You Will Run Again.
When a search is working, note down the filters and the collection you used. You will come back to the same parish for the next sibling, and the next, and recreating the search from memory each time is how an afternoon disappears.
Chapter 7. Wrap up
Drop the surname, then browse.
Search less, then browse.
Take an ancestor you could not find, and try again with no surname, a wildcard, and a single county. If that fails, find the collection for that parish and browse it. We are here when you get stuck.