The following article is a sample from Barry J. Ewell's book "Family Treasures: 15 Lessons, Tips, and Tricks for Discovering your Family History." He is the founder ofMyGenShare.com, an online educational website for genealogy and family history. 

1. First and Last Names with "Genealogy." This search uses the primary person's first and last names and checks for the terms genealogy and ancestry, along with similar terms, in an attempt to focus on genealogy websites.

• "Randy Johnson" OR "Randy * Johnson" OR "Johnson, Randy" ~genealogy OR ~ancestry

2.First and Last Names with Locations. If you are getting too many results, you might want to try adding the place of birth or death to the search. This might, however, cause you to overlook websites that have your ancestor information, but with no place of birth or death given. Nevertheless, this is a way to reduce the search results to a more manageable number. If you do not have too many results at this point, you can skip these searches.

• "Randy Johnson" OR "Randy * Johnson" OR "Johnson, Randy" ~genealogy OR ~ancestry Tennessee OR +TN

Search for Johnson Websites

1. This first search will look for websites related to the name Johnson when the name appears in the title of the website

• allintitle: Johnson ~genealogy OR ~ancestry

2.This second search will look for websites related to the name Johnson when the name appears anywhere in the website. This is a much broader search than the one above. Use this search if you found few websites in the previous search. If you think the name you're searching is an uncommon name, you might have useful search results with the search below. On the other hand, if it is a common name, you will most likely have an overwhelming number of results. If that is the case, you are prob-ably better off searching on first and last names for the primary person along with the first and last names of the father, mother, and spouse.