Saturday 18 January 2014

Four Irish genie sites gain places in Top 100 chart

The Genealogy In Time Top 100 2014 chart has been revealed. Rather than a popularity contest, this chart ranks the world's genealogy websites using mainly Alexa rankings, which provide objective statistics of visitor traffic to some 35million sites.

Just four Irish sites gained a place in the Top 100. Highest placed was RootsIreland.ie, which earned position #60. The Irish Genealogical Research Society's IrishAncestors.ie came in at #79, which is a remarkable achievement for a website that launched only ten months ago. I have to own up to a particular interest in this performance because I've been involved in the development of the site, but even without my bias, you have to admit this is a hell of a success for a site created and run by volunteers. It was also one of only five societies (the others being in North America and Norway) to feature in the Top 100.

FindMyPast.ie and the Government-run site IrishGenealogy.ie came in at #80 and 100 respectively.

I admit to being a little disappointed that Irish Genealogy News didn't gain a place. With an Alexa ranking of 306,322, it was only a smidgeon short of the finishing line. I'll have to content myself with the knowledge that I'm mainly chasing the Big Boys ie huge corporations and/or state funded websites. Difficult for a lone voice to compete against that.

Even so, there are a handful of winning lone voices in the Top 100. The highest placed are Dick Eastman (#11), whose Newsletter turned 18 only this week, and John Reid of Anglo Celtic Connections (#60), who covers mainly British/Irish records from a Canadian perspective. I take my hat off to both of them. The only other blogs playing with the big boys are Geneabloggers and GeneaMusings.

The Genealogy In Time team used their chart to calculate additional statistics and found that Ancestry controls 32% of the genealogy industry, MyHeritage controls 8% and brightsolid (FindMyPast etc) controls 4%. Taken together, these three companies control 44% of the genealogy industry.