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The Maritime Heritage Project
Site Statistics ° Audience/Development Project Background
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Commitment to Shipping History: Captains, Ships, Ports, Passengers
More than 45 years of travel, research and 30,000 hours have gone into the project to preserve San Francisco's shipping history and present an overview of world migration during the 1800s. The project continues as new sections are added or expanded. (Refer to Bibliography.)
Comments include: "There is no other site like it in the world," "For the first time during years of research, I found information about family members."
Site Statistics
(As of April 2015: Various sources including Google Analytics, Urchin, Alexa.com. Please keep in mind that this is a one person project, it is a .org site, statistics were achieved through 18 years of focus.)
Category Rank (People, Society, History): 1,212
Unique Visitors per Year: 146,365 (Page Views: 731,825)
Maritime Heritage Project Global Ranking: 1,730,783
United States Traffic Rank: 1,005,137
Alexa Global Ranking: 1,370,783 (with a .org extension) out of a possible
- 876 million websites on the WWW, according to the January 2015 Netcraft Survey;
- 466,848,493: December 2011, Netcraft (Internet services company in Bath, England)
- 1 trillion web sites: In 2008-2009, Bing stated more than 1 trillion sites.
VISIBILITY: January 2014 Rankings 731,825 Page Views Per Year Web Site Rankings as of January 2014 Comparisons |
Online | Backlinks | Site Ranking 10 (max) (1) low) |
BankOfAmerica.com (international banking) |
1998 |
329,000 | 8 |
SFGate.com (Chronicle/Hearst online news) |
1994 |
1,210,000 | 8 |
StateFarm.com (national firm) |
1995 |
195,000 | 7 |
MarinIJ.com (online newspaper) |
1996 |
339,000 | 6 |
MaritimeHeritage.org |
1998 | 910 | 5 |
ProMortgage.com (national firm) |
1997 | 411 | 0 |
Global Rankings
| |
United States | 41.43% |
Australia | 33.97% |
Singapore | 4.20% |
United Kingdom | 2.64% |
New Zealand | 2.34% |
Norway | |
India | |
Italy | |
Ireland | |
Sweden | |
South Africa | |
Russia | |
Switzerland | |
Mexico | |
China | |
Japan | |
Turkey | |
Malaysia | |
Egypt | |
Denmark | |
Thailand | |
Indonesia | |
Poland | |
Chile | |
Greece | |
Portugal | |
Malta | |
Finland | |
Argentina | |
Trinidad and Tobago | |
UAR | |
Panama | |
Taiwan | |
Nigeria | |
Peru | |
Colombia | |
Ghana | |
Vietnam | |
Ecuador | |
Cyprus | |
Puerto Rico | |
Morocco | |
Cambodia | |
Qatar | |
Venezula | |
Costa Rica | |
Maldives | |
El Salvador | |
Iceland | |
Senegal | |
Jordan | |
Bermuda |
The Maritime Heritage project is listed on major maritime search engines around the world, including maritime museum sites, shipping lines such as American President Lines, and merchant marine sites. The Maritime Heritage site is also used as a training/reference site by the San Francisco Maritime Museum and J. Porter Shaw Maritime Library in San Francisco. It is recommended to researchers by The San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch.
The market is international: Given the aging of America, family historians/genealogists are blossoming. San Francisco Bay Area has 6,605,428 residents, many with ancestors who arrived by ship. Internationally, 72 cruise ship lines carry more than 1 million passengers annually and that industry is growing (it is expected to exceed oil revenues). Thousands of families have an "historian" (one genealogical library received 30 million viewers, although a time frame was not given nor numbers substantiated).
As of April 2015, individuals from more than 100 countries visited the site, 75% of visitors were from the United States; the remaining were from the U.S. Government, educational institutions and other non-profit corporations, and Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Poland, Italy, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Thailand, India, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey, the Faroe Islands, the Russian Federation, etc.
Visitors view as many as five pages and a significant number stay between 5 and 30 minutes.
Audience: Who Views The Maritime Heritage Project?
422 sites linking in include Wikipedia (from multiple pages); Yahoo Answers; Ancestry.com; California State Library; Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley; The Boston Herald; Viator.com (travel site); Refertus (history site); SFHistoryEncyclopedia.com, SF Geneaology, American Merchant Marine, Central Pacific Railroad, various Maritime Museums, University of Victoria (B.C.) Humanities Media Centre; various school districts, Ask.com, World News Network (wn.com), PBS (Public Broadcasting System), Yahoo!Directory, libraries and virtual libraries, Asia Finest, LearnOutLoud (audio books), expertgenealogy.com, Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites, Museums on line, ItaliaMaritime, SailBlogs, Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, Antique Maps, Arabic Military, California Wreck Divers, OldSaltBlog.com, Sailor's Choice (history), Explore North (whalers), Boating SF.
Search engines include: google.us, .uk, .au, .in, .ca, .fr, .nz, .au, .my, .tr, .ie
7,702 people have translated the site
Operating Systems: Windows: 2,221,618; Mac: 382,612; Unix: 31,679; All others, i.e. Symbian OS, WebTV, OS/2, BeOS, Palm OS
Financial Overview
Management and Organization
The Maritime Heritage Project's primary goal is to provide free information to individuals seeking migration and immigration stories to the West Coast of North America. It was established as a 401(c)3, but that paperwork was overwhelming.
Project Background
The Maritime Heritage Project was started in 1997 as an historical research paper by Lauren Hewett. The subject, Captain James H. Blethen, her great-great-great Grandfather, was a sea captain based in San Francisco during the mid-1800s. His life had not been recorded; her idea brought him to life, along with thousands of other captains, ships, merchants, merchandise and world migrations.
Beginning in 1852, Captain Blethen sailed into San Francisco with thousands of immigrants seeking new lives and gold in Northern California. During the 1870s, Captain Blethen also opened the Pacific Mail Line routes between Hawaii and Australia/New Zealand. When the Captain retired from life at sea, he was elected Chief Wharfinger in San Francisco.
The Maritime Heritage Project led to a growing respect for ships and their captains for their enduring commitment in safely moving merchandise, livestock, and people around the world under unpredictable and often dangerous conditions.