Monday, February 27, 2017

What Are the Most Popular Databases on Ancestry.com?

Ancestry.com's Card Catalog (http://search.ancestry.com/search/cardcatalog.aspx) provides several ways to list the available databases on Ancestry.com - by:

*   Popularity
*  Database Title
*  Date Updated
*  Date Added
*  Record Count

The dropdown menu on the upper right-hand side of the Card Catalog screen can select one of those metrics.

Here is the list for "Popularity":


The top ten most popular - probably based on number of clicks in a search - are:

1)   Public Member Trees (2,147,483,647 records)

2)  1940 United States Federal Census (134,484,648 records)

3)  U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 (1,560,284,727 records)

4)  1930 United States Federal Census (124,964,074 records)

5)  1920 United States Federal Census (107,694,890 records)

6)  1900 United States Federal Census (77,277,539 records)

7)  U.S. Find A Grave Index, 1600s - Current (139,958,050 records)

8)  1910 United States Federal Census (93,627,798 records)

9)  1880 United States Federal Census (50,840,843 records)

10)  1911 England Census (33,847,776 records)

This list doesn't really surprise me - the census records, city directories and cemetery records are databases that researchers doing 20th century research for their ancestry would use on a regular and sustained basis, going back in history one generation at a time.

I think that the Public Member Trees database probably has a lot more records than what is listed - the same number was provided in 2013 to 2017 (see Genealogy Industry Benchmark Numbers for 1 January 2017). 

The other database on the list that should increase with regularity is the Find A Grave index, since researchers are actively adding to it over time.  The Find A Grave website says that there are over 158 million profiles, which includes profiles from other countries.  

I wonder what the least popular database is?  I couldn't find a way to get to the end of the list except by stepping through 10 pages of 25 at a time.  After several minutes, I found that:

32,836)  Twenty years of church life in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, 1861-1881 (23 records)

Who knew?  I wonder if that will be the least popular database next year?  I wonder if the Top Ten databases will change next year?


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