Statistics and Lists: Now Free!

Two features that were previously available to Pro users only are now free for all Geni users:

Statistics

Now all users can view the entire suite of fifteen statistics for their ancestors and blood relatives. From average life expectancy and country of birth to most common first names and surnames, now you can learn about your relatives in a visual, easy to read format. Every chart is also a link to the list of names that make up the chart so you can drill down into the data. You can even edit the data in the lists to make your charts more accurate and complete!

View your statistics

Custom Lists

All of the advanced list controls you can use to refine and customize lists are now available for all users. You can filter lists by status, dates, profile attributes, and more. Dozens of columns are also available to help you build the perfect list for you.

We've also moved the controls to the left column for better access and to let you view more of your list in single window.

Build a custom list

Improved matching algorithm

When you view a profile we search other trees to find matching profiles. We've enhanced this matching algorithm to greatly increase the accuracy and reduce the number of false positives. Although accuracy will never be 100%, in some cases we've seen the new algorithm cut the number of bad matches by 50% or more.

Note that the new algorithm will only update the match count when someone actually views the list of matches for a profile. This means if you are the first person to view matches after this update you may see fewer matches than were indicated, or no matches. As people view matches and new matches are found the counts will all be updated.

View your tree matches

Export your address book

Recently we introduced your family address book. This is a great way to collect all of the contact information for your relatives in one convenient place. We've made this list even more useful by adding an export feature.

Use the "Export as CSV..." on the bottom left of any page of your address book. We'll generate the list and send you an email when it is ready for download as a CSV file (comma separated values). Once you've downloaded your list you can import it into excel, and offline address book, and most other applications. You can use this print labels for holiday cards, print a family address book for the fridge, and more.

View your family address book

October's Most Popular Profiles

The list of the most popular Geni profiles for the month of October is now available. The top ten includes the current US President, a former US President, a Queen, five celebrities, and two Biblical figures. Can you guess who they are from their profile photos?

View any of these profiles to see if you're related. And don't forget you can use the "Send this profile" link to post interesting profiles to Facebook, Twitter, or dozens of other services.

View October's 100 popular profiles

New Feature: Family Address Book

The new family address book gathers all of your family's contact information into one handy list: email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses. Use the last name index to jump directly to relatives with last names that start with a specific letter.

There are two ways to add more data to your address book. Use the quick edit link in the actions column to quickly add details to one person. If you'd like to quickly add details to more than one person use the add information tab at the top of the list. This puts the list into edit more. Once you are done adding information to that page, use the save changes at the bottom of the list. The best part is your whole family will benefit from the information you've added. Pretty soon your family will have a shared address book!

If there is someone on Geni that is not included on this list, just go to their profile and use the add to family group button. This will add them to your family group and to your address book.

View your family address book

Horizontal Tree and Advanced Add Node

We’ve added two new features to the tree: a five-generation horizontal tree and an advanced add node form.

The horizontal view is an easy way to see a profile’s ancestry in a compact format and it makes tree building much faster. You should not have to wait for a tree redraw after adding a node.

The advanced add node form, which replaces the "more" version of the add node form, allows you to add a node with almost all of the standard profile attributes, including middle name, occupation, place and date of birth/death/burial, and cause of death. You can also add a birth order (this is limited to nodes who already have siblings or parents).

Switch to the horizontal with the chart icon in the lower right of your tree. You may switch between the views at any time. Switch to the advanced add node form by clicking "more fields" in the lower left of an add node form. If you've previously switched to the "more" version, you'll now see the advanced form when you click a yellow arrow. The advanced add node form is the default in the horizontal view.

Thank you to everyone who gave us feedback on the preview of these features. We've added single field location entry to the form, which will make it much easier to enter places of birth, death, and burial. We've also fixed a number of small problems you found.

Popular Profiles Enhancements

Now you can view your 100 most popular ancestors and blood relatives, sorted by popularity. This is a great way to find interesting new relatives. Who knows, you may find that you're related to royalty or someone famous!

Also look for the new Top 100 badge. This indicates that the profile is one of the most popular of all Geni profiles. Click the badge to view all popular profiles.

View Popular Profiles

More Enhancements

List Filters

Now you can hide profiles in lists that don't have a Photo, Child, Spouse, Sibling, or Parent. Click twice for the red x and those profiles will be excluded from your list.

Resolve Duplicates

If you find a person in the tree with duplicates in their immediate family, use the resolve duplicates option in their more menu. This will open a mini-tree where you can drag the duplicates on each other to merge them.

Improved Hot Matches

We've added some intelligence to hot matches to reduce the number of false positives. We no longer include matches born after your profile died, or matched that died before your profile was born.

Halloween gifts now available!

We've added ten spooky new gifts just in time for Halloween. Let your family know your thinking of them by sending them one of these ten new gifts:

And don't forget, Pro's now get unlimited free gifts.

Send a Halloween gift now

New Feature: Popular Profiles

Discover interesting Geni profiles with the new popular profiles list. View the most popular profiles in your family or in all of Geni, and choose the time period to see who is the most popular recently, all time, or in a specific month.

The most popular profiles in the last week include 1 talk show host, 2 US Presidents, 2 Biblical figures, 6 Kings and Queens, 1 Mayflower passenger, and 1 of the richest men in the world. View popular profiles now to meet some interesting new relatives.

View Popular Profiles

Share profiles Via Facebook, Twitter, and More

Have you ever wanted to let your friends know about a profile you've found on Geni? Maybe you discovered that you were related to someone famous, or just come across an interesting new relative. Use the new "Send this profile" link on any Shared profile to post the profile on facebook, twitter, or dozens of other services. You can also send the profile as an email message.

After you click the send this profile link, select your favorite service and then add a personal message. Your personal message and a link to the profile will be posted to the service you selected. When your friends view the message they can click on the link to view the full Geni profile for that person.

Here is what your friends will see if you share a profile on Facebook:

We hope you find this useful in sharing your discoveries with others. Let us know what you think.

New Feature: Recently Viewed

We've added a new way to find other Geni users also interested in the profiles you browse. When you view a profile you'll notice a new list of users who have recently viewed that profile. You can click their name to view their profile and contact them. If you see someone's name appear a few times on profiles you're viewing, their is a pretty good chance that you are working on the same part of the tree.

If you do not want your name to appear when you view profiles just turn off the "Let users see when I've viewed a profile (Recently Viewed By profile module)" setting on your Permission Settings page. Note that the recently viewed module does not appear on user profiles.

More Enhancements

Profile Name Display

Recently we added name preferences to let users choose how they want names displayed on Geni. Users told us that they missed viewing the full name on profiles so we've changed it back. Now profiles always display the full name, including middle name, last name, and maiden name.

Undo Pending Merges

Users have also told us that they often come across pending merges that they can complete but not undo. This makes it difficult to correct certain mistakes in the tree. We've changed this so that you can always undo a pending merge. You should now see options to complete and undo any pending merge you can view.

Unexpected Geni downtime, Tuesday, October 20th.

Geni.com experienced network difficulties starting the morning of Tuesday, October 20th. Users may have experienced Geni pages that did not load due to network timeouts. The site was taken down at 3:45 PM Pacific time to investigate, and was brought up and down several times through the evening.

Our engineers worked through the night to trace the problem and restore service, and Geni.com was brought back online at 4:30 AM Wednesday morning. At no point was any user data lost.

We are currently investigating the reason for the network failure, and configuring more robust backup systems. Thank you for your patience as we worked to bring Geni back online.

We're back

Wednesday morning update: Geni experienced network routing failures overnight. The site was put back online around 4:30 AM Pacific time. No data was lost during this period. We are sorry for any difficulties you experienced during this time, and will have a more complete update later today in another blog post. All site features are functioning normally at this time, but if you experience site instability, please let us know at help [at] geni [dot] com.

Update 10:30 PM Pacific: The site should be working again for most users. Things should be operating normally again. Visit Geni.com

Update 8:45 PM Pacific: We're experiencing some issues again, we hope to be back real soon.

UPDATE: We're Back!

We're doing some work behind the scenes right now, so you may have issues accessing Geni.com. We'll post an update here when we're done.