What is the Genealogical Proof Standard?

A five-part professional benchmark from the Board for Certification of Genealogists: reasonably exhaustive search, complete and accurate citations, analysis and correlation of sources, resolution of any conflicts, and a soundly-reasoned written conclusion.

How do you weigh conflicting records?

By source type first — a primary source contemporaneous with the event usually outweighs a secondary source recorded later — then by informant knowledge and by internal consistency across the wider record set.

Do you use DNA in your methodology?

As confirmation. DNA verifies or overturns a documented link. It does not name an unknown ancestor on its own.

What citation style do you use?

Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills. It's the field standard and it handles every record type we work with.

How do you handle sensitive family information?

Living people get privacy protection by default. Adoption, illegitimacy, and other sensitive facts about deceased ancestors are documented but published with editorial care — usually with contextual framing, not as headline claims.

company guide

Research methodology

By Margaret Ellery, EditorFact-checked by Rowan VessPublished January 1, 2024Reviewed August 6, 2026

Short answer

Our research methodology follows the Genealogical Proof Standard published by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Every ancestral claim in our guides rests on multiple independent sources, cited in Evidence Explained format, with conflicts resolved in writing.

Genealogical Proof Standard — 5 criteria applied to every conclusion.
Evidence Explained citation format — Elizabeth Shown Mills.
Primary vs. secondary source weighting — contemporaneous evidence outweighs later reports.
DNA as confirmation, not identification.
Living-person privacy applied by default.

How to use this guide in real research

Begin with a specific person, place, and approximate date rather than a name alone. Record the repository, collection, image or certificate number, and access date for every result. That citation lets another researcher retrace the same evidence and helps you distinguish people who share a name.

Treat indexes and transcriptions as finding aids. Whenever possible, open the original image and compare names, ages, relationships, locations, and informants with records you already trust. A plausible match becomes a supported conclusion only when independent sources agree and conflicting evidence has been addressed.

Quality checks before adding a conclusion

Search spelling variants, initials, nicknames, neighboring households, and a wider date range.
Prefer records created close to the event, while noting who supplied each fact.
Keep negative searches and rejected matches in your research log so work is not repeated.
Mark uncertain relationships clearly until multiple independent records support them.

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Frequently asked questions

Short, sourced answers to the questions we get most often at the desk.

A five-part professional benchmark from the Board for Certification of Genealogists: reasonably exhaustive search, complete and accurate citations, analysis and correlation of sources, resolution of any conflicts, and a soundly-reasoned written conclusion.