The Genealogy Category on Substack
It's a little convoluted to get to, but worth it. In early 2025, Substack added Genealogy as a subcategory of History. Here's how to use to find relevant posts—and interested readers—in Genealogy.
Carrie Loranger asked me about how to get to the Genealogy category here on Substack. Who knew there was one, right?
It’s a little convoluted in that you have to set it up to see it. To set it up, you have to have “History” configured in your interests, then specify the subcategory of “Genealogy.”
Once you do, you’ll see posts of those who’ve classified their publications in the interest category of History, and the algorithm has detected a subcategory of Genealogy when you visit the Explore page.
Finding Posts About Genealogy
To set this up, you have to specify your interests to Substack. You either do this on your initial onboarding, or follow these instructions from the browser:
Go to your profile (tap your image or color circle web interface) on the home page.
Notice the “hamburger” menu in the bottom left and the word More. Tap that and go to Settings. (Or make sure you’re logged in and go to substack.com/settings.)
Scroll down, and inside the box titled Content preferences, you’ll find Manage Interests. Tap the right carat >.
Scroll down to History and make sure that Genealogy has a 👍. This listing directly affects the buttons you’ll see on the Explore page.
Your configuration is all set.
Now go to the Explore menu (🔍 or Substack.com/explore), and you’ll see a series of buttons across the top that map to the 👍 you selected in interests. Genealogy will now appear as an interest along with all other interest areas you’ve selected (and a few defaults like Best Sellers). See example at the top of this post.
Sharing Your Work With Readers
If you have your own publication, you can also specify to Substack that your posts would be of interest to those looking for work in the general category of History. Though you can’t specify Genealogy, using tags and related words seems to attract the attention of the Substack algorithms so that your work will appear when readers tap the Genealogy button.
Here’s how to specify History as an interest category for your publication. This affects all posts under this publication. The only way to specify interest categories in greater detail is by using tags in individual posts. These appear to be used by the algorithm to further refine interests, but that is not documented.
In your web browser and on your home page (Substack.com/home), tap the Dashboard button on the left.
From here, tap Settings to get to your publication settings. You can also get there from xxx.substack.com/publish/settings where “xxx” is your Substack name. Note, this is different from your profile settings; you’re now modifying the settings for any post you release on this publication.
Right there on the top, you’ll see Basics. The first choices are what Categories you’ll ascribe to your publications. This is a drop-down menu. Choose History. Genealogy is a subcategory of History; that’s their view, so that’s how this works.
Congratulations! 😮💨
Call for Contributors
Why should we all have to learn the hard way? Please share what you’ve learned. Email me at YourFamilyQuest@gmail.com
Upcoming Events:
Sunday, 1 February 2026 at 4 pm/7 pm (PST/EST) Projectkin Preview: Taneya Koonce & Junk Journals
Tuesday, 3 February 2026 at 10 am/1 pm (PST/EST) Mission: Genealogy Atlantic Gathering
Tuesday, 3 February 2026 at 4 pm/7 pm (PST/EST) Mission: Genealogy Pacific Gathering
Thursday, 5 February 2026 at 4 pm/7 pm (PST/EST) Genealogy Storytelling and Junk Journals with Taneya Koonce
Sunday, 8 February 2026 at 10 am/1 pm (PST/EST) Speakers’ Corner Preview: Live with Jude Rhodes and Kyla Bayang.
Thank you!! Arghhhh, my brain steadfastly refuses to accept Substack's double menu items: two Settings, two Dashboards, etc. I had to go through it like it was my first day of kindergarten.
Thank you so much for this.