What are the most popular genealogical websites?

About.com Genealogy had a short article by Kimberly Powell on the "Most Popular Genealogy Websites 2013." They listed the usual four large online genealogical database/family tree programs, Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, findmypast.com and FamilySearch.org, but also added in FindAGrave.com.

It should be noted that FindAGrave.com is now owned by Ancestry.com. Each of these four entities have multiple websites so the question is whether you consider only the main website or add the traffic from all the owned sites? If you base "ranking" on a website such as Alexa.com (which I have done in the past) then it is difficult to factor in the multiple websites own or operated by the parent entity.

In doing this comparison, I struggle with the terminology. FamilySearch.org is a non-profit and does not technically compete with any of the other entities. The other large companies have multiple websites, some of which are more or less autonomous. For example, it has been reported that Ancestry.com has owned Archives.com for some time now, but the website still does not reflect any connection with Ancestry.com. A quick check with Alexa.com shows Ancestry.com today at 584 in the global ranks and 176 in the U.S. No other genealogy company is even close to this ranking. But at the same time, Archives.com is ranked 11,663 in the world and 2,476 in the U.S. In looking at MyHeritage.com today, it is ranked 5,405 in the World and 3,062 in the U.S. Putting it ahead of Archives.com in the World and behind in the U.S. Do we discount Archives.com simply because it is owned by Ancestry.com? Then why include FindAGrave.com?

If you look at FindAGrave.com, today it is ranked at 3,649 in the World and 899 in the U.S. So, if you consider FindAGrave.com to be a separate entity from Ancestry.com, it would rank way above MyHeritage.com in both the World and the U.S. In fact, since FamilySearch.org is ranked at 5,190 in the World today and 1,516 in the U.S., it is above MyHeritage.com in both. For more easy reference here are some of the statistics from today for a few of the larger companies with the World figure first and the U.S. figure second:

Ancestry.com  594 -- 176
FamilySearch.org  5,190 -- 1,516
MyHeritage.com  5,405 -- 3,062
findmypast.com  152,452 -- 67,028
FindAGrave.com  3,649 -- 899
Archives.com  11,663 -- 2,476
Mocavo.com  51,929 -- 9,448
findmypast.co.uk  28,094 -- 1,438
WorldVitalRecords.com  62,389 -- 16,113
RootsWeb.com  59,034 -- 24,620
Genealogy.com  15,343 -- 3,635
genesreunited.co.uk  46,686 -- 3,593
Fold3.com  33,339 -- 9,630
GenealogyBank.com  14,662 -- 3,454
Geni.com  6,876 -- 4,812

If you look at just the U.S. ranking, then the top five are Ancestry.com, FindAGrave.com, findmypast.co.uk, FamilySearch.org and Archives.com. Note that three of these are owned by Ancestry.com. So, if we count Ancestry.com as one huge entity with all of its owned subsidiaries, we could look at the rankings for the U.S. as follows:

Ancestry.com
findmypast.co.uk
FamilySearch.com
MyHeritage.com

About what would be expected except for findmypast.co.uk. What about the world rankings? Once again, combining all of the Ancestry.com companies, it looks like this:

Ancestry.com
FamilySearch.org
MyHeritage.com
GenealogyBank.com

In this list there is no number five because all the rest of the list are owned by someone else. For example, MyHeritage.com owns WorldVitalRecords.com and Geni.com. Where is findmypast.co.uk? Well, if you take all the D.C. Thompson Family History websites together, they would likely rank very high, but individually, there are more popular websites.

Ranking the top ten or whatever of the genealogy companies is much harder than you might think and the lists are almost always wrong, probably mine also. Any site in the top 100,000 of the World and in the top 50,000 in the U.S. is extraordinarily popular. If you want to get some perspective, you could look at this blog's ranking today, 346,691 in the World and 59,692 in the U.S. Not high enough to be on anyone's radar for a long time.