"The art of history writing is greatly underappreciated in this country."

(from the About page)

Non-creative non-fiction? What does the Filipino people really consider History as? In 2016, this history website commemorated National History Month (Buwan ng Kasaysayan) for the first time through its little platform. It was limited to promoting undiscovered articles in this blog. This time, in the 32nd update article to be published, it would be attempted to survey the vast and lively Filipino online community in search of the relevance of history during this digital age. It has been widely considered that history in general is not the most popular discipline in the country. This is compounded by the relative lack of historians in the Philippines as compared to other nations. In the first place, it is not the most lucrative career path. If Richard St. John can list historians in his study of successful people, their success might be partly due to context. These historians have an environment which support a more sustainable career path, but even they have issues to encounter. For instance, the "old guard" looking down on younger historians who damage the academic world, and yet seek the spotlight as "public historians." Indeed, while it becomes harder to pursue the historian way, the benefits are still appealing, at least for historians abroad. For instance, OwlGuru estimates the average salary of a historian at USD 60,990 (PHP 3.25 million) a year. Besides monetary benefits, historians in the international scene tend to have more flexible schedules to suit their various activities, research included. How about the Philippines? SalaryExpert estimates the average salary of a historian at PHP 401,940 (USD 7,535) a year. As if this was not enough of a disincentive, historians are usually pegged at the standard work day. In a way, this stifles the opportunity to conduct various activities, which again includes research. The expected worst case scenario is unemployment, which the public perceives more often than not.

So much about the historian way. Of course, success is not limited to the capacity of enjoying a hearty meal after research. As historians, the apparent disinterest of the population with history lies partly with the historian's work. How come similar social sciences such as political science and economics tend to attract more buzz than history, especially among the youth, whereas history has the power to make or break politicians and businessmen? This is the context wherein the Filipino Historian entered as it was launched to the online world in 2012. With the purpose of "bringing history to the Philippines and the world," this history blog has become a free medium with which thousands of people from every nation have come to appreciate history better. It has revolutionized the art of historiography in the Philippine web by sharing the sources and the references used by the articles. In light of the hardships of the historian way in the Philippines, a single author operating such tedious work for free is not deemed as sustainable. As for this author, while there are no clear and direct incentives like access to better resources, the fulfillment lies in the greater good of history. Nevertheless, this history blog is not the only site in the web wherein history is the niche, albeit not all of them might be in the same financial straits as this history blog. Considering the growing relevance of connectivity in the online community, it is deemed beneficial to have Filipino history websites surveyed of their impact today.

While no single metric may suffice to evaluate this impact, one factor considered in this survey is the popularity of the website itself. In the first place, driving traffic to one's website is a basic tactic. The initial problem in populating the list of top history websites of the Philippines is the lack of an actual list to begin with. Many website rankers do not categorize them as dealing with history, which makes their owners classify them under other categories such as personal, politics, local, government, arts, and society, among others. However, there are history websites which tend to stand out among them. Other than the Filipino Historian, which is this history blog, the websites to be ranked are Indio Bravo, Views from the Pampang, Filipino Genealogy Project, My Silay Heritage, Philippine History, The Kahimyang Project, The Filipino Historian (Ambeth Ocampo's blog of a similar name), It's Xiaotime!, Philippine Historical Association (PHA), Philippine National Historical Society (PNHS), Bagong Kasaysayan (BAKAS), Ngayon sa Kasayasyan, With One's Past, and Philippine-American War. For reference purposes, two government websites on history, namely that of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) and of the National Archives of the Philippines (NAP), would be used in the comparison since state-operated websites tend to attract a more sustainable stream of web traffic. Since this is an initial list, there is the possibility of excluding other ranking history websites at this juncture. In addition, each website does not have similar amounts of content, which means varying drivers of web traffic as well. Thus, newer websites such as this history blog is at a disadvantage. However, this does not discount the paramount task of ranking Filipino history websites for the first time in the online world.

According to Alexa and SimilarWeb, two of the more renowned website rankers, the NHCP site ranked 2,313 and 6,290 in the Philippines, respectively, while the NAP site ranked 10,615 and 18,272, respectively, as of publishing date. This is an expected result as earlier discussed. As for the aforementioned history websites, they are ranked by Alexa as follows: