Adherents.com is a website that aims to collect and present information about religious demographics, established in 1998. It is the largest pool of such data freely available on the internet. As of January 2010, the site contains approximately 44,000 references on over 4,300 faith groups. The site offers its information sorted geographically, focusing on the number of adherents of a given denomination in a specific region or country.

According to the site, Adherents.com presents "data from both primary research sources such as government census

Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

 reports, statistical sampling surveys

Statistical survey

Survey methodology is the field that studies surveys, that is, the sample of individuals from a population with a view towards making statistical inferences about the population using the sample. Polls about public opinion, such as political beliefs, are reported in the news media in democracies....

 and organizational reporting, as well as citations from secondary literature

Secondary source

In scholarship, a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. A secondary source contrasts with a primary source, which is an original source of the information being discussed; a primary source can be a person with direct...

 which mention adherent statistics." The website is a private project by Preston Hunter, a computer programmer of Texas, USA. It is neither supported by or affiliated with any organization.

Its compete.com

Compete.com

Compete.com is a web traffic analysis service of Compete, Inc. which operates in the United States and publishes the approximate number of global visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites in the world...

 rank as of December 2009 was 12,760, its daily ads revenue estimated at USD 58.

See also

• Association of Religion Data Archives
  Association of religion data archives
  The Association of Religion Data Archives is a free source of online information related to American and international religion. Founded as the American Religion Data Archive in 1997, and online since 1998, the archive was initially targeted at researchers interested in American religion...
  
  
• List of religious populations
• Religion and the internet
  Religion and the internet
  Religions are represented in the Internet in many ways. There are sites which attempt to cover all religions, traditions, and faiths, such as Religious Tolerance, and Beliefnet, in addition to sites that are specific to a religious tradition. Many sites are discussion groups, others theological...