This is interesting, but why doesn’t Google show more results from GenealogyInTime™ magazine?
• The answer is you will never see more than two listings on the same Google page from the same website. This applies even if you do a fairly targeted search, as in this example.
• Google limits search results to a maximum of two per website. This is their way of ‘democratizing’ the internet and making sure that no website dominates any given search.
• But wait a minute! We want the websites with the best genealogy records to dominate our search listings. But they don’t. If you are not convinced, try another search on Google for anything you want and you will see that there is never more than two listings from the same website on one Google page.
• Now think about what this means when you are looking for archived genealogy records. Google’s internal hidden limits will restrict your ability to see the best and most relevant genealogy records. Why?
• From a practical perspective, most genealogy records associated with one individual are likely to be clustered on just a couple of sites, or even just one site. However, due this hidden Google limit, you may never see the records you want. This occurs because of the possibility of Google throwing up some false positive results from the website that might contain your ancestor’s records. A false positive is a record similar to the one you are looking for, but not the record you want. Two false positives on a Google page from the same website block any more results being shown from that website (including the results you may really want to see).
• To get around this, as discussed in the article How to Use Google Advanced Search for Genealogy, you need to specify a website address in the search. This will override the two-listing limit that Google quietly imposes.
Now that we at have told you about this hidden Google limit, it seems somewhat self-evident. Genealogists who are aware of this issue can work around it. However, very few people are actually aware of this problem. Unfortunately it can have profound implications for someone searching for their ancestors.
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