By Dennis L. Maness,
MLS
Some of you (most of you?) read that title and thought
“Tilde?”.
In an earlier blog post in 2012 on the subject of
genealogy books online I wrote:
“Quick Search Tip—On Google the use of the tilde “~” (it’s
on the top of the upper left key on my keyboard) means that the search will
include synonyms of the word you’re searching for. For instance “~genealogy”
will include the words “family history”, “family tree” “vital records”
“genealogical” “surname” and probably many more in your search.”
The news that this is now no longer available as a search
operator on Google is one of the reasons I read genealogy blogs. I recently
read the October 9, 2014 Lisa Louise Cooke’s “Genealogy Gems” blog that announced that the tilde had gone away.
Apparently this happened, with no notice, sometime before
June 15, 2013 so all my searches using the tilde since then have been
misleading. Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Why did Google use the tilde? In math, the “~” symbol
means “is similar to.” The tilde told Google to search for pages that are
synonyms or similar to the term that follows. But I digress.
Now we will have to go back to using (genealogy OR
geneology OR “family history” OR genealogical) ad infinitum.
There is a list of Google’s current Search Operators at Search Operators and
I missed the “+” sign when Google “deprecated” it (the
term they use) and now this. Oh well, life goes on.
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Remember,
as Legacy Family Tree’s Geoff Rasmussen says,
“Life is short; do genealogy first!”
“Life is short; do genealogy first!”
