About Geology.com

Screenshot of the Geology.com homepage, early 2020.

What is Geology.com?

Geology.com is one of the internet’s leading websites for Earth science articles, news, and geographic information. Every day thousands of people visit Geology.com to read articles about rocks, minerals, gems, oil and gas, geologic hazards, and many other topics. We also have an Earth Science News page that is updated daily.

People visit Geology.com from all over the world. During any given week, visitors from over 200 countries enter our website. At any given moment, hundreds of people are viewing our content.

Who Visits Geology.com?

Most of the people who visit Geology.com arrive through a search engine after querying a topic that is featured in one of our articles. Some of these visitors are geologists, a larger number are students, but most are people who were simply curious about a topic, went to a search engine, and found our article.

A few of the more popular articles on our site are about Mohs hardness scale, fluorescent minerals, colored diamonds, tanzanite, limestone, and granite. Geology.com also hosts one of the internet's largest and most popular collections of static maps. These are consulted daily by thousands of people in all parts of the world.

About 40% of our visitors are located outside of the United States. Many live in countries where access to geology textbooks is limited because of cost or language of publication. For these people, websites are often their primary source of basic geological information.

Some of Our Favorite Articles

Helium: A Byproduct of the Natural Gas Industry
Goodyear blimp photo by Derek Jensen.

Colored Diamonds: When Small Imperfections Create Spectacular Beauty!
Diamond images by IBD Fancy Colors LLC.

The Most Powerful Volcanic Eruption of the 20th Century Was in the United States!

Rare Earth Elements and their Uses

What is a Salt Dome?

What Is Olivine?

Who Runs Geology.com?

Geology.com is a family owned and operated business. We write most of the articles, post daily news, take most of the photos, prepare most of the graphics, tend a server that transfers terabytes of data each month, and do the work needed to run the Geology.com store.

We acquired the Geology.com domain from a petroleum consulting company in 2005. Since then we have produced the content that you see today. Our staff members are:

Hobart M. King is a geologist with over 40 years of experience. He writes most of the articles that appear on Geology.com and compiles the daily news. He has written some of the internet's most widely read articles about rocks, gems, and minerals. He has a Ph.D. and an M.S. in geology from West Virginia University; a B.S. in geology from California University of Pennsylvania; a Graduate Gemologist Diploma from the Gemological Institute of America; and is a Registered Professional Geologist in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Prior to Geology.com he worked for fourteen years as a geologist and section head at the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, then, for fourteen years he was a geology professor at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania.

Angela King serves as webmaster, editor, graphic artist, and photographer. She has produced most of the world country maps that appear on Geology.com and many of the graphics. She earned a B.F.A. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and an A.J.P. from the Gemological Institute of America. Angela has been with Geology.com since 2005.

Laura Rittenhouse is an e-commerce professional with nearly 20 years of experience. She serves customers who make purchases through the Geology.com store and our retail websites at WaterproofPaper.com and RockTumbler.com. When you purchase something from one of our websites, Laura makes sure that your order is filled correctly, packaged carefully, and shipped promptly. She also does the wholesale purchasing for all of our websites.

Adam Rittenhouse earned an Associate Degree in Electronic Engineering from the Pittsburgh Technical Institute. He helps with packing, shipping, and customer service.

A number of guest authors with expertise in specific areas have contributed articles to the website. They are acknowledged on the pages where their articles appear.

Who Sponsors Geology.com?

Geology.com is not financed by companies, special interest groups, or contributions from anyone. Its acquisition and launch was financed by Hobart and Rosalie King. Then, for the past 15 years, it has been self-funded by advertising revenue, the same as most newspapers and their websites. We also make a small profit from items sold in the Geology.com store.

We do not sell ads directly to anyone and have no intentions of directly selling ad space in the future. The ads that appear on our website are purchased by advertisers through the Google Ads program. These ads are then transmitted directly to our website by Google. This allows us to spend our time creating content for our visitors, knowing that a trusted source is managing the ads. Allowing others to take care of the ads enables us to spend more time on what we do well and provides separation between the content that we write and our main source of revenue.

If you see an ad on Geology.com, that does not mean that we endorse the company or have any direct relationship with them. We have little control of the ads. However, we do instruct Google to block categories of ads that we believe are inappropriate for our audience and to block ads from specific advertisers that we believe are inappropriate or annoying.

If you appreciate the content that we produce, we would appreciate it if you would help us maintain our revenue by not using adblocking software when you visit our site. We spend thousands of dollars every week to produce the content displayed on this website and serve it to a worldwide audience free of charge. Revenue from the ads is what makes this possible. Thank you!