Genealogy Research Using Google Filetype Searches

Google has a nifty tool that allows you to locate a particular type of file.  This can be very helpful if you're looking specifically for file types, such as PowerPoint, (ppt) Word, (doc) or Adobe PDF. 

 

To restrict your search to a certain file type use the filetype: command.  For example try searching for:

genealogy WorldCat filetype:ppt

and all of the results will be powerpoint presentations that have "WorldCat" and "genealogy" in their text.

More on FileTypes:
There are 13 main file types searched by Google in addition to standard web formatted documents in HTML. The most common formats are PDF, PostScript, Microsoft Office formats:

• Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)
• Adobe PostScript (ps)
• Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku)
• Lotus WordPro (lwp)
• MacWrite (mw)
• Microsoft Excel (xls)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
• Microsoft Word (doc)
• Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
• Microsoft Write (wri)
• Rich Text Format (rtf)
• Shockwave Flash (swf)
• Text (ans, txt)

You can also eliminate a filetype from your search (for example, PDF), simply add a minus (-) sign before the word "filetype."  For example:
-filetype:pdf