Google Insights (beta) is a tool used to visualize how popular a search term has been over time.

Comparisons can be made of search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. 

While a search for free ancestry sources is a popular pastime, I chose Google Insights to exam three broad keyword phrases popular in our niche: genealogy, family tree and ancestry.  The trend line graphs appear below.

“GENEALOGY” on Google Insights

GRAPH A. Search term "Genealogy" on Google insights - Worldwide 2004 to present (CLICK chart to see more). Source: Google Insights

The above graph shows a “Web search” on the term genealogy.  (worldwide from 2004 to present)

Note the downward trend of people searching for the term genealogy.   The letters A, B, C etc correspond to news items about the search term.

“FAMILY TREE” on Google Insights

Again, note the downward trend of people searching for the term family tree.  It appears interest in the usage of family tree and genealogy as search terms is declining or is it a declining interest in the hobby itself?  I don’t think so. I think this trend line is due to the fact other words are more commonly being used to search, perhaps phrases such as free genealogy or free ancestry.

 ”ANCESTRY” on Google Insights

GRAPH C. Search term "ancestry" on Google insights - Worldwide 2004 to present

Search for the term ancestry appears to have remained relatively constant until around the middle of 2010 at which point the graph climbs upward before settling down at a point higher than the early 2010 search volume.

Could this be due to the “WDYTYA” effect?

Who Do You Think You Are is a series of popular TV shows exploring celebrity genealogy which first appeared in the UK.  NBC debuted the USA version in early 2010.  Ancestry.com was a prominent sponsor and we heard the term ancestry multiple times on every show.

Are people using the search term ancestry more as a result of this show?  

Is main stream media using the term ancestry more than other terms such as family tree or genealogy and thus creating more awareness of the term ancestry?

This could be the case.  Point G on the graph above corresponds with a news story by Forbes entitled “Find Your Roots with Momentum Stock Ancestry Com”.  The stock took a major leap then right around the time or shortly after when people were watching WDYTYA.  According to the news story there was a “sharp increase in subscribers” and a strong quarter*.   Did the Forbes story artificially drive up search for the term ancestry, at least temporarily?  It appears so.  

Will interest in the term ancestry return to its previous level or is interest in that search term here to stay?

Is the interest refreshed every time WDYTYA appears on TV?  I didn’t research those statistics although they would be interesting to see.

A look at the three search terms together (graph D) reveals that while the term ancestry is trending slightly upwards it is clear that the terms genealogy and family tree have dropped.  Why has usage of these two terms dropped in the time period since 2004?

GRAPH D. Ancestry (blue) Genealogy (red) Family Tree (orange) search on Google Insights

Let’s take a look where the term ancestry is appearing world wide.

GRAPH E. Geographic popularity of the word Ancestry on Google Insights

We can see the geographic popularity of the search term ancestry in the above graph (E).

It appears the search term ancestry is used the most in the United Kingdom, followed by the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Canada.  

At the time of writing, the term genealogy is number 1 in the USA and and number 6 in the UK. The phrase family tree is in position 1 in Australia and positions 4 and 5 respectively in the UK and the USA. (results not shown).

Now lets take a look at the monthly search volume for each of these terms on Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

F. Search term "Genealogy" in USA. Source: Google Keyword Tool

G. Search term "Family tree" in USA. Source Google Adwords keyword Tool

H. Search Term "Ancestry" in USA. Source: Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Local Monthly Search reveal that genealogy is still the top search term (and not ancestry).  Is this because WDYTYA is NOT showing on tv at the moment?  (October 2011).  Are people busy with kids back in school and the seasoned genealogists busy with Family History Month?  

If we look into the mind of a person newly interested in genealogy, what term might they use?  Will they be more likely to use a search phrase that includes the term ancestry given all of the recent TV coverage? For example – SURNAME + ancestry instead of SURNAME + genealogy or family tree?  Or are they looking for free ancestry resources?

Let’s go back back to Google Insights and review the listing of top search terms related to the term ancestry.

GRAPH I. Top search terms related to ancestry: Source Google Insights

The most searched terms in the graph (I) above are specific keyword phrases which include  free ancestry, family ancestry and ancestry search (the top 3).   

Family tree and genealogy come in at number 9 and 10 respectively. 

Ancestry appears to be a trending upward term when used in very specific keyword phrases, known as long tailed keywords, such as free ancestry.

These phrases will have less volume of search but will be more targeted with individuals going after a specific item or items; and it appears they are using the word “ancestry” in that phrase. 

Look what happens when you compare the search terms free ancestry to free genealogy and free family tree.  Free ancestry is the blue line.

It appears Ancestry.com has done their keyword homework.  Their latest promotion is 15 days of free Ancestry access (October 1-15) to celebrate their 15th anniversary.

Why use “Ancestry” instead of alternative words?

Ancestry is easier to spell than genealogy. Family tree is easy to spell too but “free family tree”and other long tailed keywords like this don’t appear as often as phrases such as ancestry.

(Note, I haven’t done an exhaustive keyword analysis and there may be terms that appear more often but in general it appears free ancestry is currently one of the top keyword phrases that people are using to search).

Ancestry is hyped on tv in WDYTYA.  Ancestry.com ads appear often.  

If indeed, new comers to genealogy are using the term ancestry more often to search, should we be featuring more blog post titles and SEO techniques that use long tailed keyword phrases containing the word ancestry?  (presumably to catch the interest of the newbies researching their family tree.  These newcomers may be our next newly found cousin.)  

These are all conjectures and it is fun to play around with the stats.  (In fact you may want to check other search terms such as “family search” or “familysearch“.)

What do YOU think?  

Is Ancestry the Hot Word of the day….month….year?  Or at least since mid 2010?

Given the trend lines, Google Insights seems to think so.

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Please leave your comments below. 

Google Insights (beta) and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool are free tools offered by Google. Note – Google Insights will allow search by News event – results not shown.

*As an aside,the ACOM stock is currently down along with the rest of the market.

A quick search on Google Insights shows monthly search volumes for the terms genealogy vs gardening, another popular hobby.

Luxegen Genealogy and Family History Disclosure.

Years ago I subscribed to Ancestry and exhausted all the leads I could find there.

Yes, that sounds a bit impossible considering they have millions of records…but this was years ago.

I was researching in Quebec and New Brunswick and just wasn’t finding what I wanted in their database at the time.  I was having more success with offline sources.

I then got busy with a new job and let my membership go for a time.

I recently re-subscribed through Ancestry’s free trial and WOW!

In the last few days I’ve been finding record after record. My genealogy friends on twitter are probably getting tired of hearing me crow about this!

Some records I had before and some I didn’t.

The New Records mean NEW LEADS!

Country of Origin and Residence

With regards to my gg-grandparents, James Kerr b. 1804 married to Jane Henderson b. 1810 Ireland I’ve found Canadian census records from the 1851 and 1861 census that state their birth was Ireland and places their residence as Sherbrooke County, Canada East (Quebec). This I had before.

Valuable Church Records

It was the Methodist church records of the rest of the family members I didn’t have. What a windfall!

I now have the following records:

• Death and Burial Records Compton Methodist Church – James Kerr d. 1873(my gg-grandfather)

• Marriage of William Kerr and Sarah Maria Ball  1873.  (my g-grandparents)

• Death record of William Kerr 1924. (my g-grandfather)
• Birth, Marriage, death records of two of William and Maria Kerr’s children
• Birth, Marriage and Death records of several of William’s siblings and their children.

• Birth and Baptism of Homer Kerr 1881. Hatley (Church of England), Quebec (my grandfather).

• Census Record  of Homer Kerr and Elizabeth Wilson 1916 in Saskatchewan (my grandparents).  Okay…there was an issue with earlier Quebec census records for Homer Kerr.  He was called “Bomer”   Yes, Bs and Hs are very similar.  It doesn’t matter. Someone took the time to index all of those records and I am grateful.   I found him!

I was accessing the BMD records through the Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection) 1621-1967. According to their web page there over 14.5 million records now.

If you were like me and let your membership go, consider trying again. You can always cancel after the free trial if you aren’t finding what you want.

I’ve been having FUN, FUN, FUN finding these records. Normally you go for ages just finding a genealogy tidbit here and there.  Genealogy friends can relate to the FUN I’m having

I’m thinking of upgrading from the Canadian collection to the World Deluxe Membership. I’ve linked to some of the census records below.  Give them a try.  Maybe you will have genealogy FUN too

[Note to my KERR first cousins reading this - drop me a line if you wish to have a copy of these records]

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Census links for Canada:

1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia

1861 Census of Canada

1871 Census of Canada

1881 Census of Canada

1901 Census of Canada

1911 Census of Canada

Census links for US:
Search US Federal Census Records
Search the 1930 Census

Other countries I’m researching:
Ireland: 1841/1851 Census Abstracts (Northern Ireland)

Ireland: 1841/1851 Census Abstracts (Republic of Ireland)

1861 Scotland Census

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US free trial and Canadian free trial

1) If you won the grand prize in the Ancestry.com Ultimate Family History Journey Sweepstakes of $20,000 for genealogy travel to places of your choice, where would you go, and what would you do?

2) Tell us of your dream genealogy trip using the prize money in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this post, or in a comment on Facebook.

We would go on an extended roots trip to Scotland and Ireland.

First we would go to Peterhead, Scotland where my Grandmother WILSON was from and live there for a month or so and soak up the atmosphere.  Perhaps I would find distant cousins.  I’d look up records, hang out at the local genealogy society centre, take photos and read about the history of the times when Granny was there.  My husband and I would explore around the area and up and down the coast.

Secondly we would travel to Northern Ireland near Belfast from whence my IRVINE relatives came.  We have relatives still living there very close to the airport.  I would do some genealogy research and perhaps I might even make headway on discovering where in Ireland my KERR relatives were living before they emigrated to Quebec.   Ultimately I would love to get the KERRs back to Scotland but one adventure at a time.

I’m sure a couple of months of traveling around searching for my ancestry while paying for flights, hotels and car rental, food and genealogy records would eat up the $20K in fast order.  If there was any left we’d just have to stay longer

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Related:
Ancestry.com Free Trial

What I found was interesting.   I noticed the “Genealogy” search term trend (blue line) has been drifting downwards rather significantly over the last five years. The  “Roots” (red line) search term has drifted downwards slightly but not as significantly as genealogy.  The searches for the term “Ancestry” (orange line) has been fairly consistent over time.  The graphs on the bottom part of the figure are showing news reference volumes.  It seems the term “Roots” is in the news more and not necessarily with reference to the genealogy context.

Even more interesting is the country distribution of people using these terms to search:

New Zealanders search the word “Genealogy” more than any others in the world.  (see graph below) Canadians like the search term “Roots” more than any other country.  Americans tend to search fairly evenly for both “genealogy” and “roots” as do the Australians.

Country distribution for the three search terms