One of the joys of the internet is that websites are being improved so frequently that step changes can happen almost without users noticing. Nowhere is this more true than in genealogy. Searching for ancestors has been one of the great online sports for ages but the past 12 months has seen a sea change, with researchers given unprecedented access to primary material.
It is little more than a year since only the 1901 census could be accessed online from home. Now all the previous ones can be seen plus most of the information you will need from the registers of births, marriages and deaths - all without leaving your armchair. In the year to April, 2005, 1.7m people were searching their roots online, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings, a 27% increase on the previous year. The momentum has not slowed: a staggering 1.7m surfers visited Ancestry.co.uk in September alone, according to Comscore Europe.
Where does one start? I asked the Family Records Office in London to reduce the process to its basics. There are two essential steps before going online. First, speak to Aunt Cecily in Slough and any other ageing relatives who may remember key facts about their parents and possess letters and documents. This is vital because, for reasons that seem bizarre in the Google age, there is still a 100-year timelag before census data is released. This, strangely, makes it easier to search the 19th century than the 20th. At the same time you should collect any "solid" information such as parental birth, deaths or marriage certificates, as they give the essential information you need about dates and streets to launch a search.
Now is the time to log on. There are countless good genealogy sites, ranging from general ones such as 1837online.com to particular ones such as nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline, which stores a million wills from between 1384 and 1868. But if a one-stop solution is needed, then look no further than ancestry.co.uk, which, in partnership with the Family Records Centre, has gathered practically all the census, births, marriages and deaths data needed for searches in England and Wales. This includes 1881, which used to be something of a monopoly for the Mormons because of their intense activity in tracing ancestors. Scotland is even better served with scotlandspeople.gov.uk because parish records are also included.
The Ancestry site requires a subscription of £70 a year. This means you should join when you are about to start serious searching. But there is a surprising amount of free information on the site and they are currently offering a month's free subscription for the whole site. So, if you are organised, you could get everything you need free - but be sure to make a note of the day you need to unsubscribe. In London you can use ancestry.co.uk at the Family Records Centre for no charge.
If you are looking further afield, the search terrain becomes more difficult but there are still plenty of leads on the web. The trail for my great grandfather went cold after locating a census form online for 1901 which gave his birthplace as Westmeath, Ireland, in 1850. I was pleasantly surprised after a bit of googling to find there was an ad-hoc website dedicated to Keegans in Westmeath with email exchanges between participants. Genes Reunited, the offshoot of Friends Reunited, puts you in touch with others who may be searching for names similar to your own and enables you to build your family tree. Like so many amazing things on the web, it is easy to take them for granted as soon as they happen. Yet the fact you can search for ancestors way back into the 19th century and get copies of census documents via your laptop is quite remarkable. It won't be recorded in gross national product, but it is nevertheless adding to the wealth and happiness of the country.