Top Twenty Connection Finder Themes

Question

Continuing a recent look into the Connection Finder features, this table examines the top 20 Connection Finder themes by number of views. Sorting like this helps us decide what themes to use, and sometimes reuse, when planning, and what themes to possibly avoid in the future. For example, these themes didn't break (and still haven't broken) 1000 views: Westminster/Middlesex, London; Hispanic Notables, thriller novelists, artists, internet innovators, Georgia Notables, and toy inventors. Before we decide to use some of those again, we'll consider why those themes didn't work well and whether it was the theme or the list of notables used. On the other hand, the themes below worked well, and keep drawing in traffic even after their feature week is over, unlike many of the themes with smaller numbers.

Top 20 Connection Finder Themes

Theme	Votes	Answers	Views
Jamestown	56	120	15200
Royalty 2021	50	108	12500
Irish Notables	36	60	9100
Royalty 2022	43	76	8400
QEII's British Prime Ministers	74	141	7800
US Declaration of Independence	34	121	7500
US First Thanksgiving	48	135	6900
Mayflower	40	88	6600
Royalty 2023	34	72	6600
Scottish Notables	47	68	6500
German Notables	29	48	6500
DNA Notables	42	73	6400
US Presidents	39	90	6200
Native Americans	30	39	5500
US Founders	39	89	5300
Elizabethans	36	55	5300
Notables Legacies	34	46	5300
Accused Witches	35	60	5200
Castle Builders	43	74	5100
Extraordinary Elizabeths	32	65	5000

Comments

Is there a bottom twenty list?

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Theme	Views
Westminster/Middlesex	715
Hispanic Notables	772
Thriller Novelists	800
Artists	862
Internet Innovators	901
Georgia Notables	940
Toy Inventors	975
Charlton Heston and Co.	1000
Indiana Notables	1100
Cambridgeshire/Huntingdonshire	1200
Tony Bennett	1200
Manhattan Project	1200
OPS	1200
Stephen King	1300
Screen Doctors	1300
Gordon Lightfoot	1300
Sculptors	1300
Chefs and Foodies	1300
Second City	1400
Harlem Renaissance	1400

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Wow, I’m kind of surprised at some of the less popular ones such as Stephen King and the Harlem Renaissance. Although, they do speak to being US centric which I know is one of the big complaints.

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Can we see the Votes and Answers columns too for the bottom 20?

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Rather than type out a new table, this link is to the sheet I use to track everything: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QbYB2d9qGtN9JH2bEtFlANqG6TKkiB7paa1C1T2N7t4/edit?usp=sharing

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Yes interesting bottom list.

Answer 1

Thanks Abby, these are absolute figures so more US traffic = apparently more popular themes.

Could you please add a column for % of site traffic (where it can be determined easily where the theme relates).

eg Is German Notables a low absolute figure but a high % of traffic from Germany?

Comments

Also, the time elapsed since each post may be obscuring how popular it was. For example, as the figures are presented, it looks as if Royalty has become less popular over time, but that may just be the effect of cumulative views over a long period. To clarify this, it might be helpful to have an additional column showing the number of views for each theme in the first week after it was posted.

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I do not have the site traffic handy. I'll ask Steve to take a look, if he's got it available.

In regard to how much the traffic is versus was; the cumulative traffic is important-we want the traffic whether it's still coming in or came in suddenly. In this case, these are still getting traffic, but it's slowed to a few hundred hits at a time when the stats get updated every several months. That's a stat I can start tracking, though I won't have it for the already used weeks. It will be a new item.

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Thank you, Abby. Views in the first week will give an absolute measure of the popularity of a theme. The cumulative view count depends on both popularity and the length of time the post has been up, in some mixture that would be very hard to separate out.

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The counts here are G2G views and activity. I think site views also should be treated as indications of popularity. I sometimes look at all of the target profiles and my connections to them, without ever bothering to go to the G2G discussion.

Answer 2

It looks like (am I understanding correctly?) the figures shown in all 3 columns correspond to G2G engagement.

Is there a way to track the traffic on the featured profiles themselves? And do those features help the global (ie. not necessarily from within WikiTree) visibility of profiles?

Comments

I'll look into it, Isabelle. It isn't data that I have access to at the moment, but would be interesting to see. My guess is that it wouldn't be that different from what we see in G2G, but I may be wrong.

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Thank you, Abby.

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I was thinking that the view counts were the outside traffic to the profiles, but now I just realized they are the G2G view counts.

Answer 3

Thanks Abby, you're the best! As I expected, the fewer people in a theme, and less US centric, the less interest is shown. Not to be mean about it but, if you feature themes where the least known genealogical participation is expected, you will find the theme that garners the least interest and participation. To expand the Tree, my thoughts are to find the theme that generates the most interest and participation, whatever that may be. As a voluntary participant in genealogy, my participation does not depend on inclusivity. Some of my most interesting discoveries are met with indifference when shared with people that have no interest in genealogy.

Answer 4

Yes interesting.