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10 July 2010

Does the Site Have an Agenda?

Keep in mind the purpose behind any website or source you use for your family history research. Is it possible that the accuracy of the site and the information is influenced by something other than accuracy?

Is the site's as much information as possible, just to generate traffic and ad sales?
Is the site's goal simply to make information more accessible?

Sometimes it can be hard to tell. But any site's information should be compared with other records (particularly if the site's information is transcribed).

I have seen County GenWeb sites where names of cemeteries were wrong, locations were incorrect, and transcriptions were incomplete. And I've seen ones that were highly accurate as well.