For the last several months, my Google Analytics report has noted that my top two postings were the royal lines for Anne (Skipwith) (Goforth) Oxley and Rose (Stoughton) Otis. I have several thoughts about this. Certainly, it is more likely to find people who share these lines because they are from 350-400 years ago. It only makes sense that people would be more likely to hit those pages than my Slovak lines through which I'm related to a smaller population group.
But it does play into the negative view of genealogy as a pursuit of grand ancestry. I've often surmised that the percentage of people pursuing "real" genealogy or, better, in-depth hardcore genealogy is small, somewhere around 5-10% at best. So, 90% of the people doing their version of genealogy, are those that really like to see a connection to a king. And, of course, the remote past. It is quite something when asked, "how far can you back?" to answer more than 1,000 years in certain lines. [Written human history is only about 6,000 years old, so going back 1/6 is quite something].
I'd like to flatter myself that people like the postings because they have real sources. However, I can see the google or bing search that led to my page and never does someone query: "Rose Stoughton with sources." So, we'll see if any other pages make their way up the list. By the way, the third most popular hit is my page on Bogus Royal Gateways. So royal lines keep the traffic up to my particular doorstep.
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