An article on the website, LDSMediaTalk, pointed me to an interesting statistic today. It appears that the official website for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS.org, ranks at the top of all organizational Church websites on the internet. In fact, at #3,095 and having peaked at near 2,500 at the beginning of October, it is one of the most visited websites on the Internet.
Looking at the rank, and the current membership of near 13 million members worldwide, one would wonder if it’s not just members visiting the site. Could it be mere curiosity about the Church, activity of members themselves, or does the Church itself have a more technical background than others? As a practicing member of the Faith, I have to admit these numbers were surprising to me, and I don’t have an answer to those questions. It isn’t too surprising though, in that the Church has pioneered many technologies around Family History and recently has encouraged its members to blog and use the internet for good. The church has also created a Youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/LDSPublicAffairs.
Amazingly, the church’s other main websites, FamilySearch.org (a website for Genealogy enthusiasts), and Mormon.org, at 11,342 and 63,314 respectively, also rank fairly high when compared to other religious websites. Here are the Alexa rankings of other large Religious organizational websites:
Catholic.org – 25,990
NOI.org (Nation of Islam) – 576,153
SBC.net (Southern Baptist Convention) – 204,346
Watchtower.org (Jehovas Witnesses) – 19,072
Venganza.org (The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – just for the non-believers) – 70,560
Being not as centrally organized, I had a difficult time finding a single source for Hinduism, Buddhism, or Judaism. I also realize that Nation of Islam is only one sect of beliefs within the Islamic faith – I would be interested to see any other major Church websites out there you may be familiar with. It would be nice to see a greater presence on more Church websites like this. What other Churches rank high in Internet visibility and traffic?
