Is Ancestry Losing Its Market Share To MyHeritage and Geni?

For US-based genealogists Ancestry has been its own ‘brick wall’ when it comes to finding ones European roots because trends would indicate that Ancestry might be losing its market share to sites like MyHeritage and Geni. Even though Ancestry has a World Explorer Plus membership option, their record base is primarily US historical with approximately 16 billion records total. Compare that to a site like MyHeritage with just over 6 billion records and you might be tempted to think that’s the end of the story . . . but it’s not.

While Ancestry may have a larger collection of materials, web subscriptions and social proofing indicate that sites like MyHeritage and Geni are more viable when it comes to making important genealogical discoveries. Consider Ancestry’s interface where you studiously enter a name and are instantaneously thrown into a tailspin of irrelevant information and dead-ends. Their search engine can be so ludicrous at times that if you even search for some KNOWN ancestor you will get 100,000 records of stuff that does NOT belong to you obfuscating the one, single record that you can confirm which is usually stuffed 38 pages down. Ancestry’s search algorithm can be infuriating at times.

These types of negative user experiences prompt people to search out sites that meet at an efficient intersection of time and results. Family Search is a bit better at producing relevant search results in my experience. The trick is to try and find what you need on Family Search and then go over to Ancestry to claim the actual records and attach them to your tree. But why all the damn hassle in the first place?

I’ve noticed a trend on social media where sites like Geni.com and MyHeritage.com are in much better graces with family historians, not so much because of the individual records, but because there seems to be a larger network of users on there willing to assist others.

Consider the fact that although Ancestry has 16 billion records, it only has about 3 million users! MyHeritage has over 80 million users representing 42 different languages. Having recently acquired Geni.com, that adds another 11 million users, some of whom might be redundant as each platform serves a slightly different function. That’s almost 27 times as many users.

Ancestry hasn’t been idle however. It recently acquired FindAGrave in 2013 but that partnership has led to a lackluster experience for many users as the new relaunch has had many reeling in terror. With ads all over the site and a clunky redesign, it’s like a once peaceful cemetery has laid a freeway right through it!

Here’s where Ancestry ends and MyHeritage and Geni (and others) begin. Ancestry and Family Search will only get you so far in your US-based research; however, if you want to connect to your European ancestors in a real-life way, you need to at least begin with inputting your ancestors into Geni’s database. From there you can search surnames and places and make some big time discoveries. Geni has a free option, MyHeritage is a subscription-based platform.

The thing that I found out the hard way is that if you are researching any European ancestor (1) that is not English, and (2) goes back beyond the modern era, you will eventually be facing records in another language. Even if you are to look into English manorial or parish records, at some point they will be written in ‘medieval’ English or Latin. I’ve definitely had my share of trying to analyze parish records from England in the 1600s.

For other countries you will most definitely need to have your records translated if you do not already speak the source language. But that’s ok, this is where the 80 million other users come into play. I’ve noticed that others out there are all too willing to make a connection with other potential family members via genealogy. Getting into social media genealogy groups that specialize in your European country of origin is the way to go nowadays and is definitely a trend you need to get into.

If Ancestry has 3 million users and the population of the United States is 325 million then it only has less than 1% of the population subscribed, ceteris paribus. By those same standards if Europe has a population of 510 million and 80 million users, that’s almost 16% of the population participating. Talk about a support network!

Another negative in Ancestry’s column that is taking market shares away is DNA testing. As someone who has tested on Ancestry and another non-US based company, I can say unequivocally that Ancestry’s ethnicity estimates are LESS ACCURATE than their competitors. My estimates, as compared to my known family history, is more accurate abroad because the DNA database a European-based company is testing against is swimming in the same genetic pool my ancestors came from.

These are the “Profiles connected by Geni’s World Family Tree” in real time.

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