Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Top 30 Most Popular Posts on Genea-Musings in 2013

Like many other genea-bloggers, I'm curious about which posts on Genea-Musings are "popular" - and why they might be.

Here are the Top 30 Genea-Musings blog posts from 2013 that had the most page views in 2013 (from View Count statistics on Google Blogger Posts page). 


1) Family Tree Maker 2014 Software Announced - 30% Discount (or more) (7083 views, posted 26 August 2013).  This post probably was highlighted by a large website or newsletter.

2) My 23andMe DNA Test Results - Post 1 (6722 views, posted 5 March 2013).  DNA posts are popular!

3) Dear Randy - Why Does LDS Church Exert So Much Control over Genealogy? (5467 views, posted 29 March 2013).  This post must have gotten some LDS publicity.

4) Search Records From Within the FamilySearch Family Tree (4553 views, posted 23 July 2013).  A major breakthrough for the FSFT.

5) MyHeritage Record Matches Keep Delivering News! (3943 views, posted 4 April 2013).  MyHeritage promoted this post.

6) Surname Saturday - LNU (? Dolbear ?) (England to colonial New England) (3498 views, posted 28 September 2013).  I guess lots of folks have the LNU family...

7) First Look at Family Tree Maker 2014 - Post 1: Family View (2728 views, posted 10 September 2013).  New software releases usually get a lot of views.

8) Ancestry.com Raises US Subscription Price to $99 for 6-months (2252 views, posted 27 August 2013).  Probably resulted from a search for "Ancestry subscription."

9) Making a Descendants Chart Using Family Tree Maker 2014 (2138 views, posted 18 September 2013).

10) My 23andMe Test Results - Post 2: Chromosome Views UPDATED! (2128 views, posted 12 March 2013).  Another DNA post.

11) Received my Mitochondrial DNA Test Results from Family Tree DNA (2128 views, posted 14 June 2013).  Another DNA post.

12) Top Ten Genealogy Software Reviews for 2013 (1925 views, posted 5 August 2013).  Software reviews get a lot of hits.

13) UPDATED: Genealogist Beware - Checking Out Genealogy.us.org (1798 views, posted 14 January 2013).  A problem site for unaware genealogists.

14) RootsMagic Treasure Hunt Clue #11 (1636 views, posted 18 March 2013).  The RootsMagic treasure hunt clue was a popular post.

15) Blog Post Compendium from the NGS 2013 Conference (1534 views, posted 9 May 2013).  29 geneabloggers wrote posts about this conference.

16) RootsTech 2013 Geneabloggers Review (Updated) (1461 views, posted 24 March 2013).  46 geneabloggers wrote posts about this conference.

17) Treasure Chest Thursday - Post 179: 1872 Sale of Land in Washington County, Iowa (1389 views, posted 29 August 2013).  I think that folks searched for "public land sale" here.

18) First Look at Ancestry.com's Story View (1316 views, posted 31 May 2013).  This new feature on Ancestry.com was popular.

19) Amanuensis Monday - Probate Records of Mary (Thurston) Slocum (1657-1732) (1278 views, posted 8 April 2013).  Why was this so popluar?

20) FamilySearch Family Tree Open for Everyone (1250 views, posted 5 March 2013).  Another major milestone for FamilySearch.

21) Is FamilySearch De-emphasizing Genealogical Research? (1235 views, posted 16 April 2013).  Lots of genealogy keywords in this post!

22) The "Rivers of America" Map (1217 views, posted 19 July 2013).  This was of interest outside of genealogy.

23) Great Charts at TreeSeek - UPDATED (oops, still uses new.FamilySearch data) (1216 views, posted 23 April 2013).  Everybody likes charts!

24) My Autosomal DNA Quandary (1209 views, posted 22 August 2013).  DNA posts are popular.

25) Amanuensis Monday - Probate Records of Abraham Tucker (1653-1725) of Dartmouth, Mass. (1204 views, posted 18 March 2013). 

26)  Family Tree Magazine's 40 Best Genealogy Blogs for 2013 (1161 views, posted 16 April 2013).  Another post for a "best of" about genealogy.

27)  RootsTech 2013 - Live-Streamed Sessions (Updated) (1089 views, posted 4 March 2013).  Many folks tuned in to these sessions.

28) First Look at my AncestryDNA Ethnicity Update - Post 2: More DNA Results (1087 views, pasted 13 September 2013).  Another DNA post.

29) First Look at Legacy Mobile App for iOS - FamilySearch Family Tree (1074 views, posted 26 March 2013).  A new app.

30) Making a Photo Tree in Family Tree Maker 2012 (1063 views, posted 14 February 2013).  Charts in genealogy software are popular posts.

The five most popular Genea-Musings posts for all-time (at least since 2007) are:


1)  1940 Census Enumeration District Maps Online at NARA Website (23,600 views, posted 18 July 2011).

2)  Merry Christmas to All! (14,917 views, posted 25 December 2011). 
3)  Genealogy Presentations on Slideshare.net (14,376 views, posted 28 January 2010).

4)  World records for number of children (9921 views, posted 21 July 2006).

5)  Randy's NGS 2010 Photos - Post 1 (6169 views, posted 4 May 2010).

I don't know why my top two for 2013 aren't on the list above!  Something is wrong with Google Stats, perhaps?

Of course, all of my blog posts are viewed by many more readers than those that go to the web page for the post - those who read them on the Genea-Musings home page, those that read them in an RSS reader, or on a mobile device, and those that receive them via email.

Another measure of popularity or readership might be in the number of comments generated by each post.  I don't think that is a reliable measure of popularity because of the proliferation of RSS reader usage, email usage, and mobile device usage, each of which require one or more click throughs to get to the comment box.

It certainly seems like readers search for pop culture topics, DNA topics, and for genealogy software topics and find my blog posts.
Previous "most popular" posts on Genea-Musings are:


I wonder what the least popular Genea-Musings post was?  i'll go look sometime soon!


Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver



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