• The top 100 genealogy websites in aggregate account for 0.43% of all internet traffic, showing that genealogy is a meaningful force on the internet. When combined with all the other genealogy websites on the internet beyond the top 100, this would suggest that about 1 out of every 200 queries on the internet are for genealogy. That is pretty significant.
• The ten fastest growing websites from the Top 100 Genealogy Websites List all experienced growth rates greater than 50% over the first three months of 2012. These websites were (in order of greatest growth) Arkiwerket Digitalarkivet (104%), Mocavo (95%), Tribal Pages (81%), Geneabloggers (77%), Genealogy Trails (67%), Locate Grave (60%), Genealogy Bank (59%), American Ancestors (55%), World Vital Records (52%) and Ancient Faces (51%).
• Many of the very largest genealogy websites also experienced strong internet growth in the first three months of 2012. For example, Ancestry.com grew by 20%, FamilySearch grew by 22% and GeneaNet grew by 18%.
More devices are now available to access ancestral records on the internet.
• When we divided the Top 100 Genealogy Websites List into quartiles (first quartile = websites #1 to 25, second quartile = websites #26 to 50, third quartile = websites #51 to 75 and fourth quartile = websites #76 to 100) we found a fairly uniform pattern of growth. The first, second and third quartiles all grew at exactly the same rate of 21%, while the fourth quartile grew at a slower pace of 9%. This is another indication the field of genealogy is experiencing broad rapid growth and that growth is not concentrated in just a few websites.
Which Countries are Experiencing the Strongest Genealogy Growth?
We also looked at growth by country to see if there were any identifiable patterns. For example, is the US dominating genealogy growth or is the increased interest in genealogy a more global phenomenon? We looked at countries that had at least four major genealogy websites in the Top 100 Genealogy Websites List. This would be Canada, Ireland, the UK and the United States. Here is what we found:
• There was a fairly wide dispersion of growth rates across countries. Canada was found to be growing the fastest at 30%. The UK grew at 21% (the global average) while the United States grew slightly slower at 18%.
