Roots Web | RootsWeb.com Review

Searching your family tree through Rootsweb.com's WorldConnect Project is completely FREE. Alternatively you can be re-directed to the parent site, Ancestry.com (or Ancestry.co.uk), but you will then have to pay their respective annual subscription fee (see our other reviews for more information). Click here to read our review of Ancestry.com - Ancestry.com Review

A basic search on Rootsweb.com allows you to search by the following parameters:

Users can also choose to search using Ancestry.com if they pay a site subscription. If users do so, the following search parameters are available:

RootsWeb.com is a free site offering you links to many resources of information around the web. RootsWeb.com is part of Ancestry.com, and since RootsWeb is a free service, you can expect to find banner ads on most pages, many of which re-direct to its parent site at Ancestry.com. We found that some of these flashing banners get a little annoying at times when you're trying to concentrate on performing a search and it's sometimes hard to distinguish a banner ad from a legitimate link. With that said, for many users, the fact that the site is free will more than make up for these little annoyances!

The information contained on RootsWeb is mainly the result of millions of other genealogists having uploaded their own family trees and sharing their genealogical research. You can access this information by searching the family trees through the WorldConnect program on RootsWeb. The search results you get may be a little hit-and-miss depending on how many other genealogists' family trees interact with your own, though as time goes by the information available through the WorldConnect program will only increase as more and more genealogists upload their family trees to the program. Nevertheless, you are very unlikely to be able to research your entire family tree using the WorldConnect program exclusively. To this end, RootsWeb has also provided links to many other free-to-use databases of information.

At first glance, using RootsWeb can be a bit daunting. The myriad of links that litter the homepage can be difficult to navigate at times, especially for someone new to online genealogy. The main purpose of RootsWeb is to connect people so that they can help each other and share genealogical research. Most resources on RootsWeb.com are designed to facilitate such connections. RootsWeb therefore seems less useful for the newbie genealogist, but more appropriate for a more experienced genealogist who can develop existing research and build on a partially completed tree. It is also ideal for someone who simply wishes to share their research with other members of the genealogical community. This is possible using the WorldGen facility featured on RootsWeb. For a beginner genealogist, we highly recommend Ancestry.com, the most popular genealogy website in the world, which has helped thousands of newbie genealogist get started on their way to discovering their own ancestry.

The bottom-line is this: if you're on a budget and are unwilling to pay to research your family tree, then RootsWeb can be a valuable source of information. It is, however, a limited source ? only returning results where such information has already been researched and entered by another user. If you can afford the subscription to Ancestry.com, and particularly if you're new to genealogy research, then we suggest you take a look at what Ancestry.com has to offer instead!

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