Infoplease Biography Search - Help

Biographies Search Tips

Standard Searching

When you enter a name, the search engine will first look for any exact matches. Punctuation and capitalization do not matter, but order does: "John Fitzgerald Kennedy" is a good way to search for the US president, but "Kennedy Fitzgerald John" could produce unwanted matches.

If no exact matches are found, then the search engine looks for matches where all of the words you request are present in the index for that entry, but the order may be different, or the words you entered are only part of the full name, or you haven't included all of the words that are in the index.

Expanded Searching

If you enable expanded searches, you will always get the extra matches from the second step above. Also, you will get entries where any word you provide matches any part of the index for that term. This can give many unwanted matches if you're not careful. This is best used only after a normal search gives no results, or gives results that don't match the person you are seeking.

Quick Tips

If you are unsure of the spelling of someone's first name, leave it out—the last name by itself will usually match.

If you left a first name out because you were unsure of its spelling, and you got too many matches, try putting in only the part of the first name that you can spell—partial matches will help narrow the search.