Genealogy Today has a review of several online US Federal Census resources including Census Online, Census Finder, Ancestry.com, and Genealogy.com.

There are two types of online census sites, free and paid. First, let’s look at a couple of free sites: Census Finder and Census Online. Both provide links to census records, as well as links to other types of documents, such as birth, death, land, and historical records. Yet, each of these sites has a unique look to it.

Census Online has a very clean interface- easy to use- making it a good place to start your online census surfing. The home page has clear links to useful tools. A very helpful set of tools is the census form downloads. When you find the online census record you were looking for, a couple of quick clicks of the mouse will get you the form you need to transcribe this information.

Census Finder has a more cluttered look, but does provide more links to other records. Very helpful is a short state and census history at each state level page. These extras make spending some time at this site well worth your while.

The free census sites are transcribed records. That is, someone copied the census information from the original microfilm. Because the handwriting on census records is often difficult to read there will be errors, as well as the common human errors when any document is transcribed.

I’d also like to recommend HeritageQuest for census record research, available through subscription or free through your local library, genealogy society, or other family history membership organizations. With Heritage Quest, you can research both the transcriptions and originals, by individual name and location.