HeritageQuest , a company in Bountiful, Utah, hired workers to index censuses, and these indexes were put on CD Rom. They have indexed all of the censuses from 1790 to 1920 and are preparing to put them on their Internet website. I've purchased a number of the HeritageQuest indexes for states where my ancestors lived. When I recall the hours I spent rolling through a census microfilm because I did not know the page where my people were listed, this is a very reasonable price. This is a yes and no answer.
Most indexes have an error rate.
The AIS indexes have fairly high error rates which means you may not find your people in the indexes. The Heritage Quest indexes on CD Rom are more reliable. The Seattle Branch of the Regional Archives has all the published census indexes. Many of the other Regional Archives have copies of the indexes, also. CGRS E-mail me to let me know about broken links.