Genealogy Wikis

Site Activity

Here are some links to other genealogy wiki's and some site activity statistics Updated 5 July 2009

*Daily edits revised 7 July 2009, excluding Bots, and adjusting for acivity gaps in WeRelate and Genealogy. (Ie., I didn't include data from periods when the site was not actively being used. In the case of WeRelate, for instance, that was a period from about midnight to 6AM.)

Visitation Statistics

Visitation Statistics from Quantcast:
Keep in mind that only one of these sites (Genealogy) is "quantified", meaning that they've signed up to get more accurate statistics. Data for the rest of the sites are estimated. Some of these sites have a European orientation (GenWiki, and Rodovid), and this may skew their statistics.

Commentary

Only two of these sites receive significant visitation: WeRelate, and Genealogy. Both sites have similar site statistics. Though the number of articles on Werelate is significantly greater than that for Genealogy, site visitation is similar for both sites. However, vistation on Genealogy seems to be primarily driven by "passer bys" who do not return, whereas visitation on WeRelate is driven by a cadre of regular users. This difference is probably driven by the fact that WeRelate does not yet advertise its presence, while Genealogy gets an automatic boost from its association with the Wikia family of wiki's.

Vistiation statistics indicate that both Genealogy and WeRelate have similar levels of visitation (14.5M an 15.9M visits per month, respectively). However, regular users of WeRelate account for 73% of all visits, or 10.6M visits per month, compared to 36% pr 5.7M visits permonth on Genealogy. The difference is driven here by a greater "passerby" rate for Genealogy, meaning that many people visit this site once, but do not continue as regular users, whereas on WeRelate relatively fewer people visit, but of those who do visit, a high percentage continue to access the site on a routine basis.

Traffic Graph

The following is drawn from Quantcast analysis of WeRelate and Genealogy traffic data. Note that the timescales for the two are slightly different, and the WeRelate data are estimates based on monthly sampling, whereas the Genealogy data are based on daily data. Both differences are due to the fact that the Genealogy data are "quantified", in Quantcast terminology.

While the data for these two graphics are not precisely comparable, that are sufficient to make some observations about traffic to the two sites over time. As a generalization, traffic to WeRelate seems to show more volatility, but overall seems to be on the increase. Traffic on Genealogy shows considerable day to day variance but that's due to the fact that the data is being captured on a daily basis; if that factor is smoothed over, traffic flow through the site is highly consistent, but declinging slightly through time. With regard to this later point it is interesting to examine Genealogy's data over a longer time period. These data (not shown) indicate a significant upsurge in Genealogy traffic in the October to January timeframe. This is attributed to an advertising campaign conducted by Wikia designed to attact visitors to specific Wikia family sites. This clearly resulted in an upsurge of traffic at Genealogy such that at the peak Genealogy traffic substantially outstripped that of WeRelate. However, when the advertising campaign ended, traffic gradually declined at Genealogy, and in fact continues to decline. Currently, the two sites have approximately equal traffic.

An intersting feaure of both the WeRelate and Genealogy traffic data is the decided drop in traffic at the end of February and beginning in of March (arrows in graphic). This is particlar apparently in the Genealogy data, where it is clear that the decrease was a short-term transient event, lasting about five days. Werelate also experienced a drop off during this period, but it is not preserved in the data quite so clearly, and is not particularly distinguishable from other "troughs" in the data that can be seen in this graphic. It would be interesting to examine traffic data from other sites to see if the same transient effect could be detected, or if this was unique to WeRelate and Genealogy.