The Web of 2009 tantalizes the user who approaches it with an interest in history. Hughes’ and Greengrass’ recently-published Virtual Representation of the Past makes clear the variety of newly developed resources that are available. Nevertheless, the ever-increasing array of historical source material, archival records, inscriptions and reports now published on the Web, including online topic-based websites and online journals, are all too often just beyond the grasp of the non-specialist scholar. Even today, professional historical research on the Web is dependent on the researcher knowing the right websites ahead of time, not on simple queries of the Web as a whole. Some component of this global information network should be capable of supporting a query searching for all online historical evidence relating to a given time and place. For instance, it should be possible to enter the query “1767 AD” to bring the user in contact with the newspaper transcriptions from that year provided by Costa’s Geography of Slavery, with the pertinent proceedings of the Old Bailey courthouse in London published online by Emsley et al. (2009), and with the large number of remaining online sources associated with that year. It should be possible to receive highly relevant results from such queries instead of the largely irrelevant results often generated by a Google search. Such a service would, moreover, make online historical research more useful and more pertinent to the interested layperson. Imagine, for instance, a family visiting Brittany to trace their family roots. What texts, artefacts and scholarly discussions exist, they might ask, that pertain to Brittany at the time when their ancestors came to the North America? The online summaries of a local tourist bureau or Wikipedia articles are unlikely to suffice, but if the online digital contributions of local and national museums and archives were made available, such a family could more effectively plan their personal historical journey of discovery.