How many matches do you have? Plus, improvements for Ancestry

[pendlelad]

Hi everyone,

I'm just curious of how many matches other people have, since i think i have quite a lot (103 pages, 50 on each page so that equates to approximately 5150 matches). Let's see who has the most!

Plus, after playing around with the Ancestry DNA website and also reaching out to Gedmatch and FTDNA to use my raw data, i have come up with a couple of improvements ancestry could make on their website. If you can think of any please comment down below.

1. Be able to search (or a dedicated page) of common people shared in your matches family trees who are NOT in your tree (who appear in multiple numbers not just in one tree). This might solve a lot of unanswered questions and brick walls. I know you can search for surnames now but it is a lot harder to work with.

2. Be able to search for the birth location of the person who had the DNA test. During my excruciating searches to find the common ancestor of my more confident matches (and mostly failing), i came to the conclusion that my American cousins are very much harder to find a link with (because they cannot trace back further than when their ancestor set sail for America). If i could search for a fellow British cousin then i could identify many familiar locations where we share ancestors.

3. Make your matches trees accessible and shared surnames available even when your Ancestry subscription runs out. We have all paid alot of money for these tests and it would be nice to receive something back in return!

Pendlelad

[hurworth]

Started out with 600 last September and likely to have 1000 matches by the end of June.

I don't think I'd want 5000!

[pendlelad]

hurworth,

I thought there was some mistake! i cannot have that many cousins!

Regards,
Pendlelad

[Suzy W]

82 pages for me, so that must be around 4,100 cousins   And I only did the test two months ago, someone must of been busy in my family.

What does bug me is the "New Ancestor Discoveries" It matches me to one of five people, having DNA to one man, this man I have not got in my tree    Born in 1857 and died 1920, no connections as far as I can see.

I am lost with the whole Ancestry DNA thing.  They have matched me to my 3rd and 4th cousins who I know and taken the test.  Sadly other 4th cousins I have contacted just do not seem to have the same names as I do, drives me bats going over records etc again trying to do match ups.  It would nice if Ancestry could do name match ups with the DNA

[roderickpaulin]

4th cousins means a common ancestor six generations back 8th cousins is ten back.
my father's list at 50 per page spans 195 pages.
as to the discoveries many possible cousins link us to the name Mills with no apparent connections, BUT one tree out there shows two men connected to one woman where the rest only show one ... and there is a son born much earlier than the rest.  The second man COULD be related as the surname shows up in our tree a few times.

[hurworth]

What does bug me is the "New Ancestor Discoveries" It matches me to one of five people, having DNA to one man, this man I have not got in my tree    Born in 1857 and died 1920, no connections as far as I can see.

You should read this:
https://dna-explained.com/2016/06/14/trying-to-make-ancestors-out-of-nads/

I think all these NADs are giving people on Ancestry DNA-fatigue.  Whilst I see the value in Ancestry doing some tree matching work in the background for users, people are getting a little overwhelmed with so many matches and some will be "false positives". 

May I suggest you upload to Family Tree DNA, unlock it, and use their chromosome browser.  And if you are keen also upload to Gedmatch (free).  You will still get loads of matches in North America whose ancestors all appeared to have arrived with the Pilgrim Fathers though.

One thing I have been considering (not that any unexplained closish matches have popped up in Britain or Europe - well, there's one, but it's not really really close) is that surely some of our WW1 troops left a little bit of DNA behind when they returned after their war service ended. 

[bearkat]

Just wondering what sort of numbers people are getting on Ancestry? Not the pages of distant matches but the ones that are 4th cousins or closer which hopefully you have a realistic chance of matching.

I have 116
OH has 138

Are these numbers pretty average?

[JaneyH_104]

I gor my Ancestry results back almost exactly a year ago.  Initially I had about 80 matches at 4th cousin or closer; that figure now stands at 170.

I’m the only person I my family who has done a test, and no-one else wants to.  This has perhaps led to slower progress than it might have been had there been other family members to cross reference. So far I’ve linked ten of these matches into my tree, and in the process have found ancestors who emigrated to the USA, Canada and New Zealand. I’ve been able to share UK records with US cousins, and have also discovered a half second cousin who has enabled me to close off some loose ends in one branch of my tree.

At the moment I’m helping a match who is aged 90 try to discover his biological father, and following up shared matches is helping to narrow down the list of potential suspects. I’ve also just got in contact with a second cousin once removed who knows little about her grandparents because her mother ran away from home.  I have a reasonably well researched tree for this family so am now sharing information with her.

Progress is slow but very rewarding!

[roderickpaulin]

50 matches per page, 984 pages but only 8 on the last page
total of 49,158 with 755 being fourth cousin or closer.