Internet traffic is now the primary measure of a website’s popularity. Internet traffic to a website is actually composed of three factors:
• Number of visitors to a website.
• Number of page views per visitor to the website.
• Amount of time spent at a website.
All three factors are combined to determine a website’s traffic ranking.
Three major services provide internet traffic rankings: Alexa.com, Compete.com and Quantcast.com. Alexa measures global internet traffic. Compete.com and Quantcast.com measure primarily US internet traffic. We decided to use Alexa exclusively for our internet traffic ranking for three reasons. First, Alexa is the leading provider of global web metrics. Second, Compete and Quantcast primarily measure US internet traffic. This creates a bias towards US websites. Using traffic metrics from them would handicap non-US genealogy websites and any US genealogy website that gets a significant portion of its internet traffic from outside the US.
Finally, we know from our own server records the exact internet traffic metrics for GenealogyInTime Magazine. When we compare our known internet traffic metrics to all three services (Alexa, Compete and Quantcast), Alexa is the most accurate.
What the Top 100 List Shows
The following information is provided for each website in the Top 100 list:
Rank – the genealogy websites are ranked in order from 1 (most popular) to 100.
Website – gives the name of the website.
Category – lists the primary purpose or function of the website.
Country – gives the primary country for the website.
Free/Pay – many websites incorrectly label themselves as free. To be considered free, the vast majority of the online and offline content of the website had to accessible for free. In addition, websites that offer 'premium' capabilities for a fee are considered pay sites.
Traffic Rank – this is the Alexa traffic rank. Alexa ranks 30 million websites worldwide. A lower Alexa traffic number implies a more popular website. For example, Google.com has a traffic rank of 1 since it is the most popular website in the world.
Address – provides a link to the website.
The List
On the next page is GenealogyInTime Magazine’s global list of the Top 100 Most Popular Genealogy Websites as of January 2012.
