Friday, December 11, 2009

Internet Genealogy Going Down?

First off, rumors of my demise have been premature. I may be preoccupied with the dead, but I still occupy a place among the living. More on my silence in just a moment.

Second off, rumors of the demise of Internet genealogy are also premature. Yes, I know that most of you have heard no such rumor. The news has been restricted to personnel at new genealogy sites experiencing their first December. I have a private message for you newbies. The rest of you can tune out for a couple of paragraphs if you like.

When you experience it for the first time, it's pretty scary. Ever since Thanksgiving site traffic has been dropping like a rock. The worst is yet to come. Hang on tight. The trend continues until the big day. Last year no more than a peck of us did online genealogy on Christmas day. I could hear echoes of my keyboard tapping as I wandered alone around Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org last year.

But don't despair. New Years resolutions are just around the corner. Come January your traffic will come storming back. You may even exceed your pre-Thanksgiving numbers. So tighten your belt. Celebrate the season of the year when the powers of light put an end to the encroaching darkness. We celebrate the turning of the tide--as Jack Sparrow might say--"astronomically and spiritually."

P.S. Thirdly, part and Christmas parcel with decreased time to do genealogy is decreased time to write and read blogs. Commensurately, I haven’t been writing much. What I do write I will keep short and inconsequential. My gift to you for the holidays... ;-)

5 comments:

  1. I had noticed that Family Search was running without the slow response that seems to happen on Saturdays, Sunday afternoon, and Monday evening. I like it!

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  2. The word I got from a FamilySearch feedback volunteer is that the 0.99 version we've been beta-testing for the last few weeks will go live on Dec 13. Maybe that date was chosen because of the low traffic? The new Family Tree portion only available at labs.familysearch heretofore is a great addition.

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  3. Good insight on the dip in traffic to genealogy sites including blogs. I do think that the holiday season is a big factor.

    But if you look at Google Insights for Search (http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=genealogy&geo=US&date=1%2F2008%2012m&cmpt=q) you'll see that year after year since 2004 there is a dip starting in November then a huge surge the last week of December.

    This makes sense since a) many folks are off from work the week between Christmas and New Years and have time to work on genealogy and b) many have received genealogy related gifts such as database software, DNA testing kits etc.

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  4. So *THAT* explains it... I guess I won't worry anymore then... :)

    Thanks AI!

    --Dean

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  5. Interesting the Alexa statistics do not show that.

    For Familysearch.org
    http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/familysearch.org

    Or for ancestry.com
    http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ancestry.com

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