Please forward to USGenWeb Project lists. Forwarded from David Graham, Sr. Product Manager RootsWeb.com. Further questions and concerns from USGenWeb Project members who host sites on TGN/RW are being gathered and will be communicated to David to address. Thank you all for continuing to share your questions and concerns with the Advisory Board. Tina Vickery National Coordinator USGenWeb Project --- David, We have the following questions from across the Project. I am certain there will be more to follow: 1. Are you aware of how many states and counties have already moved off RootsWeb? Does Rootsweb and Ancestry understand the inevitable consequences of this latest announcement? I don't have a specific count of state and county pages that have moved off of RootsWeb at this time. We do recognize that some may choose to be hosted elsewhere due to this announcement, but we are truly working to ensure that this change does not affect the RootsWeb online experience at all. It should not change the experience of being hosted on RootsWeb. 2. Does this mean Ancestry will include the Rootsweb sites in their Search on Ancestry, either by subscription free and/or both? There is no change in what is surfaced in Ancestry's search due to this change. The pages and data on RootsWeb will continue to be part of the separate, free RootsWeb online experience. There is no plan to require a subscription to access user content from RootsWeb. 3. How will this effect search engines and counters, etc that are in use our existing www.rootsweb.com/~xxyyyyyyy/ URL's? People should continue to be able to find your pages when using search engines. Right now the search engines will have listings for the old RootsWeb URLs, and it will take a while for the new URLs to show up in search engines. Since we will be redirecting members to the new URLs, though, they will still be able to access the pages regardless of what links come up through the search engines. As far as impact on page counters, I don't think there will be an impact, but I will need to verify with our technical experts and get back to you on that. 4. Are the mailing lists affected by this? Either the mailing lists administered by the USGenWeb Project Advisory Board or the many county and other lists maintained coincidently by USGenWeb Project volunteers? This change should not affect mailing lists in any way. If we find that this is not the case, we will make sure to let you know. Tina Vickery National Coordinator USGenWeb Project