The Ancestry blog posted a notice today about several apparently fraudulent genealogy Web sites that claim to have "the largest online genealogical search tool" and Besides the three sites mentioned in the Ancestry blog, there are other sites which also appear to be operated by Records Partner, such as www.ancestry-records.co.uk. Records Partner, in turn, appears to be a type of affiliate program -- one of several run by a Canadian company called Interactive Brands The genealogy-type sites which appear to be springing up from this program charge you to join up as a member, and then point you to the products offered by Records Partner - essentially links to other services.

On a related note, there are also other Web sites on the net which make money in similar ways. Another series of genealogy sites that I've run into appear to be run by a company that calls itself Software Doctor, Inc. These include a host of sites such as birthrecords.ws, pennsylvania-records.com, freerecordsregistry.com, family-genealogy-search.com, etc. You can see an example of their affiliate program in this 2007 newsletter posted at softwaredoctor.com, but what I find intriguing is that the primary softwaredoctor.com URL now redirects to Google...

So how do you protect yourself from scams such as these. Unfortunately, many of these sites pay for high placement in search results on Google and other sites. Many also appear as "sponsored links" on reputable Web sites that support Google advertising, including Ancestry.com and even this site. This makes it appear the fraudulent site is being endorsed by the Web site on which it appears, although that is generally not the case. Therefore, before you provide anyone with credit card details or payment, check out the site and its claims to see what you can learn. There are a number of things you can do to identify and protect yourself from genealogy scams.