Guided Research Introduction

What is Guided Research?

• The purpose of the Guided Research pages is to provide a prioritized list of online genealogy indexes for birth, marriage, and death records as evaluated by FamilySearch professionals for optimized research.
• The Guided Research project was created for consultants (who know something about genealogy) through basic steps to find birth, marriage, and death information for a locality they may not be familiar with.
• The list of countries or localities created are limited to those with online index collections and is not designed to cover every locality.
• Guided Research pages can cover a country or other large jurisdiction such as states, provinces or counties.
• Collections must have significant coverage for the locality for it to be considered to be placed on the main Guided Research page for the locality.
• The goal of the Guided Research pages and the databases selected for each locality is to have a 60% success rate when searched. Because there are many reasons why you may not find a record for an ancestor (lack of records, loss of records, incomplete database coverage, incorrect indexing, incorrect search perimeters, lack of information, server failures, etc.), the links under Why can't I Find a Record? may help in overcoming these reasons and provide a higher success rate.
• The Why Can't I Find a Record? pages in Guided Research are to provide tips for problem solving when the initial result proves unsuccessful.