Genes Reunited

Family History Web Site Boosts Visitors by 55 Per Cent with Mapping Technology

Genes Reunited is the leading family history Web site in the United Kingdom (U.K.). Its 9.7 million members use the service to build family trees and trace the histories of their ancestors. Because location is a crucial factor in many searches on the Web site, the company’s management team decided to implement a mapping feature using Bing™ Maps for Enterprise. Released in January 2009, the tool helped to boost the number of unique visitors by 55 per cent.

Business Needs

In recent years, there has been an explosion in the popularity of genealogy Web sites in the U.K. From hobbyists to professionals, more and more people are investigating their origins by tracing their ancestors. Genes Reunited is at the forefront of that movement. With more than 9.7 million members—one in four adults using the Internet in the U.K.—the site helps users to find out more about their family histories.

Users begin by adding the names of their immediate family to create a virtual family tree. Genes Reunited makes suggestions for possible matches—people to whom the user might be related. Visitors can then choose to make contact with these matches, sharing information and ideas about where to look in the site’s catalogue of historical records.

The response from our users was incredibly positive. The Bing Maps for Enterprise feature helped to increase the number of unique visitors to our Web site by 55 per cent. Martine Parnell Head of Genes Reunited

These records are at the heart of Genes Reunited. The service integrates information from as early as 1841, including birth and marriage registers and census data, so users can search for their relatives through the ages. Location is a crucial part of many of these searches, helping users to determine the relevance of results.

In the past, search results from historical records were displayed as lists. This was occasionally unwieldy, particularly when a user was searching for a common name. With hundreds of results, the information could be difficult to navigate. Martine Parnell, Head of Genes Reunited, says: “With so much information on the Web site, some of our users were frustrated that there wasn’t a simple, visual way to filter search results. We wanted to create a tool that would help our users find relevant information as quickly as possible.”

Solution

Parnell and her team started looking for a way to make the data more accessible. Because geography is so important to search results on Genes Reunited, they decided to implement a mapping feature. After a thorough review of products on the market, they chose to build the tool using Bing Maps for Enterprise, which includes a comprehensive application programming interface (API) so developers can customise.

Dave Lowe, Senior Developer at Genes Reunited, says: “We chose Bing Maps for Enterprise because it’s the most flexible mapping application available. It was crucial that we could modify the interface to fit with the rest of the Genes Reunited Web site, and the API helped our developers to do that.”
Another important factor in the decision was the amount of data that the team needed to integrate with the mapping tool. Lowe says: “We have around 650 million names in the database, many of which come from our historical records. Often these are linked to place names that have changed through history. The batch geocoding feature in the Bing Maps for Enterprise API helped us to integrate all of that information.”

Lowe built the fully customised mapping tool for Genes Reunited in just two months, and it went live in January 2009.

Benefits

Visitors to the Genes Reunited Web site can now choose to see historical record search results plotted on a map instead of in list form. Because most users know the general area where their ancestors lived, this makes it much easier to see the results that are likely to be relevant. “Our users saw that we were listening to what they wanted and building genuinely helpful tools,” says Parnell. The feature had an immediate impact on the Web site’s traffic, and the number of people using the historical records section of the service. “The response from our users was incredibly positive. The Bing Maps for Enterprise feature helped to increase the number of unique visitors to our Web site by 55 per cent,” says Parnell.

• Boosts site traffic. After the team implemented the mapping tool, the number of unique visitors to Genes Reunited jumped by 55 per cent, with a 51 per cent uplift for page impressions.
• Pushes up profits. The map feature increased record-related payments by 70 per cent.
• Provides a compelling interface. “The mapping tool really brings the site to life, helping people to visualise where their ancestors were from,” says Parnell.
• Strengthens the brand. Using a highly flexible API, the development team created a tool that fitted perfectly with the look and feel of Genes Reunited.
• Speeds up data integration. The unique batch geocoding feature helped the team’s developers to integrate thousands of historical place names automatically.
• Creates opportunities. The team is now looking at ways to make Genes Reunited even more engaging by using related Microsoft® technologies such as Deep Zoom.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published July 2009