British "David" Takes On Billion-Dollar U.S. "Goliath" For Share of U.S.'s Growing Online Genealogy Market

SAN FRANCISCO, July 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

• Findmypast.com launches into U.S. July 24; seeks to become go-to site for Americans of British and Irish ancestries

• World's second largest genealogy company takes on its biggest rival, with help of 1,000 unique record collections and 75% annual growth    

Findmypast.com, a British-owned family history website, is launching this week into the growing U.S. genealogy market.

Findmypast is the flagship brand of brightsolid online publishing, a UK and world leader in online genealogy, with 18 million registered users across its family of sites, over a billion genealogical records dating back to 1200, and a growth rate last year of 75%.  

Yet, findmypast.com enters the U.S. market in the role of David facing Goliath in the shape of ancestry.com, the overwhelming market leader and the world's largest genealogy company, with a market capitalization of a billion dollars plus.

"We're not used to thinking of ourselves as small", says Chris van der Kuyl, CEO of brightsolid, the world's second largest genealogy company. "Our ambitions are big and the launch of findmypast.com is a major market entry. The truth is, it's a growing market, with plenty of room for both of us."

The launch of findmypast.com will offer U.S. customers access to not just a wealth of U.S. genealogical records but also a vast overseas collection. The latter includes almost 1,000 unique British, Irish and Australian record collections, with some single collections containing 30 million records.

Findmypast.com is the new U.S. addition to a global network of findmypast websites - it joins existing findmypast sites in the UK, Ireland and Australia. Its launch, with the help of a separate U.S. team, follows growing global demand for  findmypast's other sites, says van der Kuyl: "Last year, we had 4.5 million visits to findmypast.co.uk from other countries, led by the U.S., while 55% of findmypast Ireland visits came from outside Ireland."

Findmypast.com will enter the U.S. market, armed with the unique wealth of its British and Irish genealogical records, as well as its unrivalled ease of search technology and its more flexible payment options.

"We aim to become the go-to family history site, first for Americans of British and Irish descent, and eventually for all Americans", says van der Kuyl. Nearly a quarter of all Americans, by some estimates, have British ancestry.

Contact: [email protected] 

SOURCE findmypast.com