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My Experience with Mocavo

Technology

Tim Firkowski

Wednesday, 14 March 2012

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What is Mocavo? Mocavo has been available for over a year now. My first exposure to Mocavo was at Rootstech 2012 in Salt Lake City. Mocavo is a genealogy search engine that provides search results from genealogy specific websites. I took a look at Mocavo and its capabilities and have written about those experiences here.

Before I left for London, England for the WDYTYA Live Exhibition, I had a brief moment to take a look at search tool. There was not much time to delve into it deeper, but I did have a chance to use the search engine tool and came across something I was totally not expecting. I found a grave photo dated 1944 for someone with my surname that was in Israel. This information now opens up a whole new mystery in my family to be explored.

The search engine has the ability to look at GEDCOM files and direct its searches on the Internet from information provided in the family file. The first GEDCOM I uploaded contained about 600 people from my paternal side to use as a test example. The first thing I noticed in the upload process is that you can select whether to allow your data to be seen by other users or keep it private. I opted to keep it private and uploaded my GEDCOM. It is also important to note that Mocavo filters out any living person from your GEDCOM whether your data is public or private.

I started looking at the persons who made it through the living filter and discovered something unsettling. My data includes: names, places and words that do not use characters found in the English language and those characters were not imported. I attempted to upload various GEDCOM files with different coding, but always met with the same results.

I sent an email to the support team and received a prompt reply explaining that at this time, their system is not able to handle GEDCOM files with international characters. It was explained that it is on their list of priorities to implement, as many genealogists will have data with international characters. I was asked to send a copy of my GEDCOM so that they could use it as a real life test subject to perfect the process they are working on to allow this type of GEDCOM.

The second GEDCOM I uploaded was from my mother's side and contains about 400 people. The resultant hits from Mocavo on the data in the second GEDCOM yielded results mostly from family files posted to the Internet by others. This could be useful if you had a brick-wall and needed direction on locating the supporting documents. Mocavo will email you weekly updates of new results from data in your GEDCOM.

For my last test I used the search engine to see what information I could find on my biological grandfather (William D. Bond). I have very little information and used what I knew as search criteria. I was not surprised that I was not able to find anything conclusive given that I have very little information to start with, but I did take note of some of the sites that did come up and added them to my bookmarks for possible future use.

Mocavo seems to be light on international resources at this time, but I am sure this will change as time goes by. There is no one person that could possibly locate all the genealogy related sites, so users are encouraged to submit sites that could be indexed. Mocavo actively seeks input from its users for possible improvements to its site. Overall I would say that I do not see Mocavo replacing other major search engines as a search tool for genealogy sources, but instead should be considered as a tool to be added to your genealogical toolbox. I look forward seeing the future results that come from my uploaded databases. Look for future posts as features are added.

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About the author

Tim Firkowski

I have been doing genealogy research since 2002 & have worked full time as a Professional Genealogist since 2008. I specialize in Polish and American-Canadian Genealogy. As a member of APG, I was the 2010/2011 President of the New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (NEAPG). I have Certificates of Completion for studies in "Foundations of Forensic Genealogy" and "Advanced Forensic Genealogy Techniques". I have been a volunteer librarian at the local Family History Center, and a genealogy research consultant at “Ask the Expert” Ancestry Road Shows. I have traveled to Poland numerous times & researched in churches and archives. At conferences and special events, you may find me dressed up in my Sherlock Holmes outfit, or my Kujawy (the folk costume from the region in Poland where my ancestors came from).