Exploring the new WikiTree Content Rank score

The new ‘Content Rank‘ (CR) on WikiTree can be used to give visibility to the more obscure parts of your tree, making it more likely that Google and the other search services will find your remote cousins and distant relatives.

Your WikTree watchlist can now be sorted by CR to generate a statistic of profile completeness. This is not a measure of the quality of the profile but of the completeness of its content.

Here’s an example of how it works:

Benjamin Mainwaring, who died in 1787 in Bristol, is on my watchlist.

His CR number can be seen to the right of the profile manager, indicated by a green arrow. Benjamin is not connected to the main tree. The icon of the puzzle piece indicating this is shown with the orange arrow. He has no birth date, no siblings, spouse, or mother. It is a minimal profile with only one source for his burial.

I have been prompted by the low CR number to see what more I can find and build his profile.

If I click on the red CR1 then I get the following pop-up which shows me the numerical weighting assigned to the various parameters used to calculate the content rank.

Content Rank does not measure profile quality. It measures things that can be calculated automatically. There is no assessment of whether there is enough evidence to support the facts, whether the conclusions are logical, and whether the locations and timeline make sense. Nevertheless, a profile with a higher Content Rank score is more likely to be genealogically complete and accurate than a profile with a lower score. This makes it more attractive to search engines.

You can read more about the new scoring system in my post at https://anneyoungau.wordpress.com/2025/06/21/content-rank-a-new-wikitree-metric/