How to Conduct an Iterative Search

The internet is one of the most valuable tool at a genealogists disposal, however harnessing this information requires the user to understand how to conduct an iterative search. Iterative searching requires the user to collect and analyze information to find key terms, which can be used to narrow down their search results. 

Finding the Key Words

Finding the right key words can be difficult. Sometimes using an ancestor's name is not a specific enough parameter to find accurate results; in this case additional terms are required. I like to brainstorm key words using a web diagram, where my terms get more specific with each succession of branches. Generally I start with the following topics to branch off of:

1. Family members names (ie. a wife or mother's maiden name)
2. FAN club members that they frequently are mentioned with
3. Where they lived
4. Their occupation
5. BMD information

When researching a geographic location I recommend starting vague and getting more specific until you have a reasonable number of search results. This is the one "filter" that eliminates results the quickest. To determine how specific I want to go, I often consult a city directory from around the time I am searching and look for how many people have the same surname. If the surname is uncommon, the odds are that a vague search using the city or even the county/province/state name will suffice. If the name is quite popular you may want to look into further specifying the search. 

As you further your research you will be able to gather more specific information, thus allowing you to generate more specific searches. 

Example

Lets take a look at an example that uses the above. 

In the chart below we will be analyzing what I knew about a man named David Sword. The information I had when I started my research has been shown in black text, with the information gained from each search iteration being shown in green, pink, and blue respectively. 

He was born in Dundee, Scotland during 1822, and married a woman named Elizabeth Ramsey in 1844. I wanted to find out more about his life as an ironfounder and where he died. 

To demonstrate how using specific key words can narrow down your results, I chose to conduct a series of google searches for "David Sword" and added on a location not in quotations. As you can see in the below diagram, the number of results more or less decreased as the location got increasingly more specific. 

By conducting the iterative search I was able to learn that David worked for the William Denoon Young company in addition to having previously operated his own foundry. He was very successful within his trade and actually managed to obtain a patent for one of his inventions. The last few years of his life in Scotland are murky at best. In 1868 he files a petition to register the births of his two sons but then fails to produce the evidence required to have his request approved. Over the next three years, the Register's Office posts multiple notices in the newspaper  requesting that he submit this information but there is no record of him ever doing so. Shortly after the final request in 1871, a newspaper article is published saying that he has left his role as commissioner for the William Denoon Young company and that they are now accepting applicants for a replacements. This last piece of information was key to me because it explained why I had never previously been able to find a death record for him in Scotland. It is unclear if the registration of his sons has anything to do with him departing Scotland. However, it is known that at the time he fled Scotland he lived in a nice part of town, held a prominent position within his trade, company, and community. By leaving he chose to give all of that up and start over rather late in his life.