Editor’s Note: This product has been removed from viewing as part of this site because it is no longer available. You can still read our original review below, but Top Ten Reviews is no longer updating this product’s information.
With a list of disclaimers a mile long and a chronic error message from the support page, we cannot recommend GovGenealogySearch to everyone, especially when there are so many excellent genealogy search sites out there. However, we do not totally discount this site in every single case because it focuses on a type of document that could yield results for some researchers – government paperwork – and this site has a very respectable variety of documents.
GovGenealogySearch.com is designed to help you find things like mug shots, land patents, bankruptcy liens and license verification. Those can help you with certain genealogy projects, and this site also has a few document categories that are even more specifically geared toward genealogy – cemetery records, passenger lists, census numbers, marriages and more.
This site only deals in information that is already public, but that does not diminish its value. The beauty of this site, and really all of the genealogy search sites we considered, is its ability to organize information and make it searchable. You are paying for the ability to do something from your home computer that in previous times would have taken hours and hours to research – first traveling to the government building with the document in question and then finding it for yourself or waiting for a possibly overworked and very likely underpaid clerk to find it for you.
One drawback to this genealogy search site is doubtlessly its small geographical focus. The records on this site are strictly from the United States. This will work fine for some records if your family has been in the United States for many generations. Also, the site makes no claim to have the same type or quantity of information for each state. If your kin mostly stayed put and GovGenealogySearch.com has a lot of information for their state of residence, you will have good results.
This genealogy search site has some major overlap with just general searching as opposed to genealogy, which might work out perfectly for some users. GovGenealogySearch.com catalogues information about living family members or friends too – their phone numbers, addresses, full names, voter verifications, missing persons information, license verification, business addresses, parole and bail records, and much more.
As mentioned, the customer service for this genealogy search site leaves much to be desired. There is a 100-percent money-back guarantee outlined out on the site. At any point up to the 60th day, you can get a full refund. The problem with that may turn out to be finding someone to talk to, or even email, about your reasons for cancellation. There is no phone number contact, and our multiple attempts to send an email to GovGenealogySearch.com yielded an error message that was confusing. We did eventually get a real response, though, to the site's credit.
This is not a genealogy search site for genealogy lovers. There is not a feeling of community – no message boards, blogs etc. – but you can get all of that in other places. If you just want the cold hard facts, GovGenealogySearch may be just the place for you. It could be useful in a number of situations.
