Dick Eastman said "I suggest you remember this web site: Mocavo.com. I bet you are going to hear a lot about it in the next few weeks and months. In fact, I'd suggest you try it right now. I've been using the site for a while during its testing and have been very impressed. This thing actually works! Today, Mocavo.com went public and is now available to everyone."
Dick's seal of approval indicates that the resource must be pretty good so I thought I'd give it a whirl by searching for a few of my families. I then did comparison searches on Google. Here is what I found:
Search 1. Pusell Australia - anyone with the name Pusell in Australia is related to me so I entered these terms hoping to find something new.
Mocavo returned thirty-six results from sites
That it returned such a small number of results was disappointing. Some of the information on the Kemp Family Site is in need of updating to reflect recent events. There are no other links to family websites with information on the Pusells.
On the other hand a Google search for Pusell Australia ~genealogy (to narrow down to relevant information) returned many more links including:
I did other searches on Tierney Dungog, Curry Camden and Tooze Australia with similar results. Searching for Headlam Tasmania brought no results from Mocavo but a wealth of good hits from Google.
Search 2 Nelson Piddlehinton - I next tried a search for a branch of the family from a small village in Dorset - Piddlehinton.
Movaco returned 3 results from
genforum.genealogy.com
familytreemaker.genealogy.com
www.archive.org
The information on the family treemaker site has not been updated since 2005 and is not as complete as can be found on other sites.
Relevant results from Google came from these sites:
www.geniaus.net
www.rootschat.com/
www.opcdorset.org/
www.familysearch.org
www.leshaigh.co.uk/
www.thedorsetpage.com
www.southwilts.com
www.mappowder.org.uk and the list goes on....
Movaco returned 3 results from
genforum.genealogy.com
familytreemaker.genealogy.com
www.archive.org
The information on the family treemaker site has not been updated since 2005 and is not as complete as can be found on other sites.
Relevant results from Google came from these sites:
www.geniaus.net
www.rootschat.com/
www.opcdorset.org/
www.familysearch.org
www.leshaigh.co.uk/
www.thedorsetpage.com
www.southwilts.com
www.mappowder.org.uk and the list goes on....
Need I say more?
I also tried some other searches for the UK:, Gowans Hawick and Ball Spotland to discover that Google returned more relevant results than Mocavo.
Search 3. Thinking that Mocavo might have a North American bias I decided to search for "John Gowans" "New York" Mocavo returned two results that were not for my John from
Google also returned results not related to my John Gowans but amongst them were some relevant links from sites including:
My little test of Mocavo is not at all scientific or comprehensive but when a company makes a statement like "Mocavo.com, provides genealogists access to the best free genealogy content on the web" I just have to see for myself. Mocavo might grow into a great resource but, for the moment, it is just one of a number of free resources available to genealogists.
Mocavo needs to amend the claims it makes on its home page, meanwhile I'll stay Google.
