MyHeritage Reaches New Milestone: 5 Billion Historical Records!

Today we are pleased to announce that MyHeritage has reached an exciting milestone: we’ve surpassed 5 billion historical records!

It has taken only two years for MyHeritage to build this treasure trove of historical information demonstrating that MyHeritage is one of the fastest-growing and most internationally diverse family history companies in the world.

Search the records now

To celebrate the occasion, we looked at some iconic names within our collections. Here are some fun facts that we discovered (click image to enlarge):

Since launching SuperSearch, our search engine for historical records, in April 2012, one of our main goals has been to provide our members with a wealth of historical documents from all over the world. We are making great strides to accomplish this through digitization, crowdsourcing, licensing and partnerships. This, in addition to multiple acquisitions in recent years, including World Vital Records and Geni, have helped us reach 5 billion records in an incredibly short period.

The records come from a wide variety of collections from many different sources and from dozens of countries. They include birth, marriage, death, immigration, military records and many others. As well as newspaper articles, photographs and family tree profiles. They help families everywhere explore their legacies online, and bring value to millions of users worldwide.

Our advanced technologies make these records even more useful.

You will receive a notification about any record in our database which matches a person in your family tree through our Record Matching technology. Correct matches can be confirmed and new information can be extracted directly to relevant family tree profiles, using the popular extract information feature. If a record contains information about a relative you never knew existed, you can add that person to your tree directly from the record itself.

Our unique Record Detective™ technology ensures that each record leads to even more records, and displays a summary of additional related records.

How we calculated 5 billion

Each collection of historical records in SuperSearch includes a precise record count. For example, our recently added U.S. Public Records Index contains 816 million records. The current count of 5.18 billion records is calculated as follows: In structured collections, such as census records, birth and marriage records, each individual name is counted as one record. For example, a marriage document naming both the bride and groom is counted as two records.  Nicknames or aliases are not counted as additional records. In family trees, each tree profile is counted as one record, even when it is available in more than one language. Each photo is counted as one record. In unstructured collections, such as newspapers or yearbooks, each page is counted as one record.

Historical records are invaluable for family history research. They are vital for making new family connections and uncovering information about ancestors. They add character and personality to your family’s past. MyHeritage continues to add millions of new records to SuperSearch every single day. We are working hard to add more global content and to make researching your family history easier and more accessible than ever before. To that end, we expect to surpass 7 billion historical records by the end of this year.

We invite you to search our 5 billion records and make new and exciting discoveries!