Genealogy Site Traffic Trends - the other FamilyLink Sites

Being a "numbers guy," I am interested in how genealogy information providers stack up against each other, and what the trends are over a period of time. I last looked at genealogy website traffic in January 2009 in a series of posts.

For this series, I am using the Quantcast statistics because they are easily understandable, and free. There are other websites that measure traffic, and their traffic statistics may be different from Quantcast. To simplify things, I will show only the number of Visits - not Persons, Page Views or other statistics available from Quantcast.

FamilyLink.com has seven web sites identified - I discussed FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com yesterday. Here are the Traffic charts for the other five FamilyLink.com sites.

The first one is www.GenealogyWise.com (a social networking site announced in July):




The second one is www.WebTree.com (a family tree site, still available, but nothing can be added):



The third one is www.WorldHistory.com (a family tree plus history site, still in beta, but available):

The fourth one is www.BigFamilyPhotos.com (a commercial photo printing site, thank you, Tamura Jones, for the lead!):

The fifth one is www.GenSeek.com (the FHL catalog site plus, not launched yet, but available through Facebook):

The traffic summaries, for the last five months (taken directly from the charts), for all of the FamilyLink.com applications is:

* www.FamilyLink.com - monthly US People = 7.1 million, daily Visits = 508,000

* www.WorldVitalRecords.com - monthly People = 123,800, daily Visits = 7,900
* www.GenealogyWise.com - monthly People = 16,800, daily Visits = 1,200

* www.WebTree.com - monthly People = 2,300, daily Visits = 91

* www.WorldHistory.com - monthly People = 9,500 , daily Visits = 1,100

* www.BigFamilyPhotos.com - monthly People = 1,100, daily Visits = NA

* www.GenSeek.com - monthly People = NA, daily Visits = NA

It looks to me that the GenealogyWise traffic is dropping quickly, the WorldHistory site has potential when it comeso ut of beta and is fully operational, WebTree is pretty much petrified, and GenSeek has significant potential if and when it launches.

WorldVitalRecords has lost traffic over the past year, and has only about 2.2% of the monthly People that Ancestry.com has.

FamilyLink.com is the mystery to me. Surely 7 million US people are NOT checking the web site to see if the tree that they put up on We're Related is up on FamilyLink.com yet. How, and why, does FamilyLink get so much traffic? Do they get a hit every time someone, that has the FamilyLink application on their Facebook page, logs on? That's the only thing I can think of to explain the traffic numbers.

Trying to use GenSeek Application

The GenSeek website is supposed to be launched in October 2009, according to knowledgeable sources quoted back in the summertime. GenSeek is widely expected to be "Family History Library Catalog 2.0." I, along with others, have interpreted that to mean that it will have:

* the content of the current FHLC
* additional content from other repositories
* links to books or databases available online

I've used the GenSeek application on Facebook several times, and I've seen the content of the current FHLC (to some extent), and the links to FHLC items when they have been digitized (e.g., in the BYU Family History Archive).

What does the GenSeek application on Facebook look like? Here's a peek:

I wanted to check out Dodge County, Wisconsin resources, so I went to Facebook and clicked on the GenSeek application (http://apps.facebook.com/genseek/) and then the "Search" tab:




On the "Location" field, I typed in "Dodge, Wisconsin." The results came back (two screens shown, four in all):

In the GenSeek application on Facebook, the results for a certain location appear all together, not separated into categories like on the Family History Library Catalog. I don't see any organization to these entries - they are not alphabetical, or by record type, or by publication date. It's just a list. This is terrible, IMHO - were librarians putting this together, or website designers?

There are only about 60 matches to my Search request for Dodge County, Wisconsin, so I can easily scan the list. What about a County with many documents in the FHLC, and many more in other repositories? It's too much to ask researchers to scan through hundreds or thousands of matches. A list of categories (like the FHLC) makes a lot of sense to me.

The record that caught my eye was the book or manuscript "Cemeteries and Churches of Dodge County, Wisconsin." I clicked on the link for it:

The resulting page shows me the information about this document, and provides the call number for the document at the Family History Library, and the fact that it is microfilmed.

There is a box on the right side that contains links for Comments, Add to Favorites, Get Citation, Share with Family, Share on Facebook. I clicked on the "Get Citation" link and saw:

The gray box provides the source citation for this record - it says:

"Turner, Clara M. (Clara Muriel Benson) , 1914-, "Cemeteries and churches of Dodge County, Wisconsin", GenSeek.com , [originally published Turner, (c1974)] , , accessed on 30 September 2009 "

That's great - a decent online source citation. Of course, the citation does not include the actual document, only the source of the document.

Where is the microfilm number? That's what I usually use the FHLC for - to find the microfilm number so that I can order a document on film at my local Family History Center.

I can find no place in the GenSeek application on Facebook that lists the microfilm number. Am I missing something here? Isn't that one of the key points about using GenSeek? That it will be user friendly and provide information about the documents that it lists in repositories? Isn't the purpose of GenSeek.com to be a "one-stop shop" for all things genealogical - documents, books, databases, etc., and to make it easy to find where they reside?

The only place that I could find the microfilm number of this book is in the Family History Library Catalog - it is US/CAN Film 982018 Item 6. This document is listed only under Church History in the FHLC, not under Cemeteries or Church Records (hmmm, the FHLC is imperfect too!).

We don't know - yet - if the "real" GenSeek will have some semblance of order to the requested documents and databases, or if it will contain the FHL microform numbers for the documents. To my thinking, GenSeek will be pretty useless without those two critical items.

GenSeek on Facebook Application is Available

Tamura Jones alerted me to the presence of the GenSeek (the Family History Library Catalog 2.0) on Facebook application on Facebook. You can read Tamura's review of the application in
his article GenSeek on Facebook at www.TamuraJones.net (I cannot get a link to the article for some reason).

Login to Facebook, and go to the GenSeek Facebook page. (If the link doesn't work, login to Facebook and put "GenSeek" in the Search box.) Become a GenSeek on Facebook fan while you're there. In the upper lefthand corner of the GenSeek Facebook page is a blue "Go To Application" button. Click on that, accept the access to your data, and you should be on the Genseek for Facebook Application!

Here is my first look at the home page and then I did a simple Search. The home page has five tabs across the top for Search, Favorites, GenStream, Following and My Profile. There is some explanatory information below the tabs:


The site says:

"What is GenSeek?

"Research tools for every genealogist. GenSeek on Facebook houses a unique method of searching for sources that may contain records of your ancestors that may be housed in the Family History Library."

I clicked on the Search tab and put "Seaver" in the Last Name search field:


A number of results came up from the LDS Family History Library Catalog that matched my Search criteria:


I clicked on the first one just as an example, and saw a description of the work "The Seaver Family" by William Blake Trask:


The yellow banner says that this source has not been digitized yet. I could click on the red flag and they will notify me when it is digitized.

Now inquiring minds want to know: Is this what http://GenSeek.com will look like when it is unveiled and there is a massive tsunami of genealogy seekers to the site after it is launched?

It seems really smart of FamilyLink to put this on Facebook as an Application before launching the website.

Tamura mentioned that this is still a "beta" site meaning that users can test-drive it but it may not be fully functional. In essence, we should try to try it out and report any problems to FamilyLink.

You can see a lot more of the site in Tamura's article. Thank you, Tamura, for the heads-up.

Are Twitter/Facebook interns for FamilyLink doing their job?

Most readers know that http://www.genseek.com/, http://www.worldhistory.com/ and http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/ are all part of the FamilyLink.com company. Readers also know that the We're Related application on Facebook has millions of users already signed up and using the fmaily tree application.

Last month, Paul B. Allen, the CEO of FamilyLink.com advertised on Twitter for "Twitter interns" who would take jobs at FamilyLink.com and promote FamilyLink.com products.

From what I can tell, several of them are working hard at promoting FamilyLink.com products on Twitter and Facebook.

There are Twitter entities for users named genseek, worldhistory, and FamilyLink, and all of them are active commenting on genealogy-related activities.

The genseek entity seems to be very active on Twitter - here is a screen shot of their posts:

Genseek on Twitter has posted (as of right now) 86 updates, has 1,531 followers and is following 1,904 other twitterers. What is impressive is that genseek has gained so many followers so quickly, since their first tweet is dated April 27th - less than four weeks!

Note the top tweet above - it links to five surname posts somewhere - we'll find out where shortly!

On Facebook, there are Pages for Genealogy and Family History (with a home page of http://www.genseek.com/) and World History (with a home page of http://www.worldhistory.com/). Here are the Facebook pages for these three entities:

On these pages, the owners are highlighting web pages and blog posts that pertain to the interests of the Facebook pages. These Facebook entities were created in just the last month or so, and currently have 6,234 (Genseek), 4,019(Family History) and 589 (World History) fans on Facebook. These fan numbers are pretty impressive to me - they greatly exceed the number of fans of my Genea-Musings page (only 104 followers) and the number of Facebook Friends I have (441 at last count). Where did they all come from? The answer is, I think, probably "from the We're Related" application user base that is on Facebook.

From the above, it looks to me like FamilyLink has found a way to bring some of the millions of We're Related users into the genealogy community - a social network - on Facebook. By exposing these "We're Related" users to the genea-bloggers community on the Genealogy and Family History Facebook Pages, they are exposing them to the existing base of genealogy industry people and to the genea-blogger work product, which I really appreciate!

Now, what about the Twitter page shown above with links to Davis, Garcia, Miller, Rodriguez and Wilson? Well, the links go to Facebook, where the FamilyLink.com people created Pages for these surnames in hopes that Twitter readers and We're Related users will participate on these Pages. Yesterday, they created Pages for Smith, Jones, Brown, Williams and Johnson. Here is the Smith Family History page:

How is the above Smith Family History Page any different from a message board or a mailing list or a Smith Family web page? The main difference is the interactivity allowed on Facebook - any fan of the page can create a post, upload a story or a photograph, comment on someone else's post, etc. It's all in one place. It's a community - a social network - where people can share information about their surname and family.

Most importantly, the use of Twitter and Facebook appeals to persons who are not yet invested in, or perhaps even aware of, the more traditional genealogy world of repositories, books, periodicals, indexes, databases, static web pages, etc.. The future of genealogy is with younger people - those who are technology savvy and who can grow to be the genealogy researchers, bloggers, writers, software developers and business entrepreneurs of tomorrow, Many of them are enthusiastically using Twitter and Facebook now.

Using Twitter and Facebook to generate interest and enthusiasm for http://www.genseek.com/ before it is officially launched is a wise business move by FamilyLink.com. The challenge for FamilyLink.com is to make the reality of www.Genseek.com exceed the expectations of the potential Genseek user base.

It looks like someone at FamilyLink.com is doing their job - are they the "Twitter interns?" I hope so, and that they are fun jobs!

When will GenSeek.com be unveiled?

One of the most anticipated genealogy web site events this year is the unveiling of http://www.genseek.com/. I summarized what I knew, and linked to Tamura Jones's article and GenSeek screen views, in my posts A Sneak Peek at Genseek.com in February and Lifting the Skirt on GenSeek.com back in March.

In an interview with Lisa Louise Cooke in March, Steve Nickle said that the site would be released to the public in two months, perhaps late May.

Now I wonder if that wasn't a little bit of misdirection - the National Genealogical Society conference is in Raleigh starting next week. Might FamilyLink.com announce the unveiling of Genseek then, or perhaps they will lift the skirts on it a bit more, but not release it yet, in order to tantalize the avid genealogy web crawlers in the audience?

I Googled Genseek.com and got this Powerpoint presentation by Brett S(tubbs?) titled GenSeek API. I could not find a date for the presentation. It also says Genseek will be available in "a couple of months."

Take a little time to go through the presentation, and notice the stated purpose of GenSeek and how searches can be conducted for genealogy resources. I think that this will be a big winner in the genealogy world. I can hardly wait!

2009 FamilySearch Developer's Conference Recordings

Several genealogy bloggers wrote about the 2009 FamilySearch Developer's Conference held in Provo, Utah on 11 March 2009. See The Ancestry Insider's collection of posts (not all on the DevCon) and I know that there are others, but I don't recall where I saw them.

The Developer's Conference sessions provided information about the current status and future development of new FamilySearch. There are PowerPoint presentations with the voice-over recordings at the FamilySearch Developer Network site here. The recorded lectures with slides include:

* Conference Kick-off, by Gordon Clarke "The Catalyst for Interconnectivity"

* Standards Authorities API, by Mark Ward

* Cocoa Objective-C (FS-Kit), by Logan Allred

* Catalog API (GenSeek.com), by Brett Stubbs

* Record Search API, by Robert Lee

* Ruby (ruby-fs-api, fs-stack), by Jimmy Zimmerman

* Timeline API, by Tom Welch

* Family Tree API Introduction, by Brian Corrales

* Family Tree Flex Framework and Components, by Tim Cross and Jason Butterfield

* Family Tree "Down and Dirty," by Ryan Heaton

* The Interoperable Citation Exchange (ICE) Initiative, by Robert Raymond

* FS Mapping and FS Research Wiki API, by Scott Hall and Jimmy Zimmerman

There are other presentations, some without slides, some with no audio.

I jumped through several of these presentations (you can click on the Time bar below the slide to advance in the presentation). The one on GenSeek was interesting and provided more detail than I've seen previously. The ICE presentation was all about putting standardized source citations into the FamilySearch databases.

Listener be warned - these are highly technical, "inside computer programming" presentations and may not be interesting to Internet consumers but may be real interesting to programmers.

Lifting the Skirt on Genseek.com

We are getting a little more advance publicity and information about http://www.genseek.com/ - the site "coming soon" to be:

"We think GenSeek will become the world’s largest gateway to family history content,” explained Steve Nickle, President [of FamilyLink.com]. “Combined with our family social networks, it will make it easier than ever before for family members to explore and share their heritage with all of their relatives. Our historic partnership with FamilySearch Catalog will enable us to launch GenSeek.com with links to millions of the world’s most valuable genealogy sources.” (from a press release, see it at Leland's GenealogyBlog here.)

I posted over a month ago about this site in A Sneak Peek at Genseek.com which had a link to Tamura Jones's article about the site with screen shots.

I listened to Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems Podcast #61 today while writing a blog post (multi-tasking!) and heard her interview Steve Nickle, President of FamilyLink.com. My takeaways from the interview:

* http://www.genseek.com/ will be released in about two months, perhaps late May.

* FamilyLink.com has a five year agreement with FamilySearch to publish FHL sources online.

* There are 4.5 million sources in the Family History Library Catalog. These will all be online at Genseek.com.

* If "customers" find a source of interest, they could sponsor digitization of that source through Genseek.com.

* "Customers" of Genseek.com may provide "sources" of genealogy information to Genseek.com

* Genseek.com will provide links to digitized data providers, e.g. FamilySearch, Ancestry, WorldVitalRecords, etc.

* Genseek.com will be a hub, a starting place for genealogy research on the Internet.

* Users will be able to comment on the sources and information in the sources.

* GenSeek.com will be FREE to users.

Please go listen to the whole interview (it starts at about "1850" on the little meter on the podcast icon (below the Genealogy Gems Podcast picture on the right sidebar. You have to click the Play button (>) to play the podcast). I hope that I got all of that right! Thank you, Lisa, for the excellent interview on an important genealogy issue.

I think that http://www.genseek.com/ has the potential to be the best thing for the genealogy world since, well, Ancestry.com (I know some would debate that! At least I didn't say Genea-Musings, or EOGN, or Facebook). A web site where all of the genealogy sources are listed (can there ever be "all" of anything listed?) with links to the records (assuming the user has an account with the repository) sounds like a winner.

Will FamilyLink.com launch Genseek.com at the NGS Conference in Raleigh NC in early May?

FamilyLink.com has bitten into a big apple here. I hope that they succeed in bringing Genseek (and their other beta product, WorldHistory.com, too) to a successful launch.

UPDATED 10 p.m.: corrected small typos and added formatting.

What will GenSeek be?

If I put http://www.genseek.com/ in my browser, I get this web page:

Mark Tucker on his ThinkGenealogy blog did a little sleuthing recently after his interest was tweaked by some tweets by Paul B. Allen on Twitter from the AFFHO conference in New Zealand last week. See Mark's post What is this GenSeek of which you speak?

As smart genea-bloggers do, Mark wondered on his blog:

"I wonder if this has anything to do with an announcement that was made in May 2008 about a partnership between FamilySearch and FamilyLink.com to produce what Paul called, the Family History Library Catalog 2.0. What could be a better “gateway” than a library catalog? Here is a quote from the May 2008 post:

"'The new catalog …may become the single best starting point for family history searches.'”

Sure enough, Paul Allen responded to Mark's speculation with:

"You are absolutely correct. GenSeek.com is the site where we will be launching the Family History Catalog 2.0. Not only will everyone be able to add new sources, and improve the descriptions of existing sources, but we will also be linking to the online versions of all the sources as soon as we (or the community) can create the links.

"The most exciting part of GenSeek was announced in Auckland, but I don’t believe we are ready to announce it to the general public yet. But as soon as we do, you can be sure that I will tweet about it!"

This sounds like it's going to be a wonderful thing. I hope it happens sooner rather than later.

The web page at the top of this post says:

"We will soon be launching a new genealogy service that will revolutionize how you do your genealogy! Please submit your email address and we will inform you when the site launches and keep you posted of our progress.We may also invite you to a private beta before the launch "

You can submit your email address for more information about GenSeek as it comes online.

Excellent work, Mark!