Ancestry.com Reaches One Million Visitors Per Month Milestone

Posted on July 9, 1998

Ancestry.com, a commercial Internet site for genealogists now reaches more than 1 million genealogists around the world each month. Ancestry.com began as the first site to offer the searchable Social Security Death Index database of 51 million names and has since grown into a combination of free and free based commercial services.

"We always suspected that the demand for online genealogical information would one day explode, and now we have proof," said Paul B. Allen, co-founder of Ancestry.com. "It stands to reason that when you combine the communications and information power of the Internet with the natural desire people have to get connected to their roots, something special is bound to happen. We're just pleased to have a role in making it all come together."

Ancestry.com offers a collection of databases containing tens of millions of names. Included in the collection are many databases that are only available on Ancestry.com including the nationwide UMI obituary database and the Periodical Source Index (PERSI), an index to more than 1.1 million articles from historical and genealogical publications dating back to 1800.

Among the data resources on the site is the Ancestry World Tree. Contained in the database are more than seven million names that have been submitted by visitors to the Ancestry.com site. The Ancestry World Tree grows by thousands of names each day and makes it easier for genealogists to contact and share information with one another.

Ancestry.com has enlisted the help of genealogy experts and provides daily news, how-to information and specific answers to common questions faced by genealogists. Much of the information posted to the site each day is also made available through the Ancestry Daily News, a free daily email service that currently serves more than 40,000 subscribers. Also included on the site are links to thousands of other genealogy related websites. Help is also available through the chat rooms hosted on the site and moderated by specialists in a variety of ethnic and geographic research areas.