Hi WikiTreers,
As most of you know, we have surname index pages, e.g.
We are making changes to them as part of our 2024 redesign and want to make sure they don't lose any important functionality.
Like most pages on WikiTree, they are meant to serve different audiences.
One of the audiences for these pages isn't human. It's bots, Google's indexing bot in particular. Surname index pages help Google find our person profiles so that they appear in search results.
Another audience is new and prospective members. If you're a Jones, the JONES index page might be one of the first pages you would look at on the site. The index is meant to showcase the breadth and depth of WikiTree: we have 100,000+ Jones profiles, a Jones Project, G2G discussion on Jones, etc.
In the past, we have considered advanced members (you) as the third audience. Surname index pages have offered some unique functionality. You can use them to sort and review people in ways that aren't possible elsewhere on WikiTree.
However, we recently improved search so that you can search for "* Jones" and sort the results in most of the same ways, do merging and matching, etc. As part of the redesign, we plan to display search results in a table. And we will add the ability to sort search results by privacy level, and include the last edit date as well. We think this will mean surname index pages no longer have unique functionality. If so, we can ignore advanced users (you) in their redesign, and just design them for new users and Google.
But ... is there something we're forgetting? Do you use surname index pages for some functional purpose?
If you use them for navigation, is it to find something you can't find elsewhere?
Thanks!
Chris and the WikiTree Team