Ancestry DNA test - disappointing result

[rsel]

Ancestry have advised me that as my son is not a subscriber he cannot see how he is related to any of the matches they provide!! I print this as a warning to others.

 
Hi, as I mentioned above why don't you look to transfer the results to you as you are a subscriber, your son will still have access, but you will then be able to see the matches ?

The results he received came with the following info:
0 shared ancestor hints, 0 starred matches, 74 4th cousins

It would seem that we have the most boring family in history - not one single match as a result of the DNA testing. I also print this as a warning to others. Having read of the pages of results other people received I'm at a loss to understand how our DNA is so exclusive! As for the 74 possible 4th cousins these seem to be no more than the often-useless 'hints' that ancestry provides to all subscribers - and as far as I can see has nothing to do with DNA testing.

I think you are miss-understanding the numbers here. As mentioned in other replies the 'shared' matches are against a tree, which you son doesn't have. If you transferred the test to you, you may well get matches against your tree. The starred as mentioned by another person, is just a 'favourite' marker. The 74 matches are not normal waste of time matches, they are actually the closest matches to you tree, the quality here will be dependant on what effort you and the other people put in on there trees to help find the connections, I only have 35 on my results. as for the other having pages and pages, what you are not seeing is distant cousin matches (which is 5th cousin or further back, and that's where the bulk will be (I had about 80 pages, each of 50 matches, when I first got my matches.

Richard

[lesleyhannah]

Well, finally son and ancestry managed to get the results to me; so his DNA results are linked to my tree.
As I suspected the 4th-6th possible cousins were more like the ancestry hints we get as subscribers. I contacted those most likely to be matches, but none had any connection to our tree - or had taken part in the DNA tests. To be fair, ancestry had put a disclaimer by each 'cousin' - saying there was no DNA match with this person. Most were in the US, We received this message with the map -

We haven't found a New Ancestor Discovery for you yet—stay tuned...
Our latest scientific innovations make it possible to discover ancestors you never knew you had––just through your DNA. We haven't uncovered any for you yet, but we'll keep looking.


As I said, we obviously have a uniquely boring tree! I'll let you know if we get any matches at all. I'd love to know if anyone else had so little positive feedback (just to say, my tree, collected over many years, includes over 6000 names - including in-laws)

[shellyesq]

I think the New Ancestor Discovery thing is being beta tested and those aren't the actual DNA matches.  If you go to the DNA page and click on the green button that says "VIEW ALL DNA MATCHES", it should bring to a list of people who have taken DNA tests and match your son. 

[rsel]

Well, finally son and ancestry managed to get the results to me; so his DNA results are linked to my tree.
As I suspected the 4th-6th possible cousins were more like the ancestry hints we get as subscribers. I contacted those most likely to be matches, but none had any connection to our tree - or had taken part in the DNA tests. To be fair, ancestry had put a disclaimer by each 'cousin' - saying there was no DNA match with this person. Most were in the US, We received this message with the map -

We haven't found a New Ancestor Discovery for you yet—stay tuned...
Our latest scientific innovations make it possible to discover ancestors you never knew you had––just through your DNA. We haven't uncovered any for you yet, but we'll keep looking.


As I said, we obviously have a uniquely boring tree! I'll let you know if we get any matches at all. I'd love to know if anyone else had so little positive feedback (just to say, my tree, collected over many years, includes over 6000 names - including in-laws)

So where are you going to view the matches ? On my results I click on the DNA button in the top menu bar, and a number of 'areas' on the returned page, one of which is labelled 'DNA matches', clicking the view matches on that area, I get a new page with the list of matches. All these people listed are the results from people that have taken DNA tests on ancestry and match to you son, so there is a very high chance they are related, its just now you have the hard bit to work out what the relationships are. Not everybody has linked trees or just have the DNA page like your son). You will find that some people don't respond, or take a while to respond.

If you have the 'new ancestor discovery' then you are really lucky, as that like shellyesq says is a beta feature and actually means you have a number of good solid matches you your sons DNA, and what they are trying to show you is a group of people who share connections, some with DNA matches to you son, but others who only have matches to people that do match him but not him directly.  I haven't got this beta feature myself, as I don't have enough close matches.

Richard

[Renatha]

I was a non-subscriber (though had been in the past) when I submitted DNA test. I had 2 shared ancestor hints, 0 starred matches and 52 4th cousins or closer. The 2 shared hints were both to German ancestors, though someone contacted me from Bristol with mutual Somerset links. I don't have any high hopes of finding any long-lost relatives there. Though I have a friend, like shellyesq mentioned, who did find her biological father and two half-sisters through DNA testing. She did get it tested through 3 sites though to achieve that.

My main interest was the Ethnicity estimate, being an Australian yet on both sides, ancestors very recently came here from UK & Europe. I was surprised that for me ethnicity was 53% Irish only having one great-grandparent from Ireland. Anyway Ancestry kept offering a year subscription at a VERY reduced rate, which I eventually took up and after many years away, find it more user-friendly than it used to be.

[Ayashi]

My parents have both recently done Ancestry DNA tests and I am the one who updates and researches my maternal line on Ancestry. We got two hints (one of which was rubbish, the other is a private tree) and 60 odd cousin matches.

The biggest problem I've had, after people simply not responding, is that a lot of the trees don't go far enough to show me the mutual ancestor. HOWEVER I have, with some investigation of the trees, found a few mutual ancestors quite far back, which has been a wonderful feeling because it feels like vindication that the research has been correctly done and the paperwork might be accurate. Even better, I believe I might be not far off proving the father of my illegitimate great great grandmother as I've got an ancestral match on her paternal father's line.

When the topic of DNA tests first came up I was sceptical of it- for one thing, I thought if someone said "your ancestors came from the middle east six million years ago" you wouldn't be able to prove you weren't being ripped off, but secondly if the results came back with "you have Scottish ancestry" I didn't like the idea that someone might grab the first possible Scottish ancestor they came across using that DNA as proof instead of other evidence. Since doing the test, I've found that with investigation things can be discovered and it has its uses.

I share my 7th great grandparents, Robert TREWARTHA and Ann RALPH with one result. I share my 6th great grandparents Peter BULMER and Elizabeth PIG with another result. My potential 8th great grandparents Nicholas UGLOW and Elizabeth SHORT with another result. My 5th great grandparents Alexander NELSON and Jane HUTCHINSON with another result...
... but those matches came because of poking around with the trees of my matches and looking for the links. Ancestry didn't supply them for me. It's unfortunate, but genealogy always has been a game of finding things out for ourselves.

I'm very much looking forward to narrowing down the guilty party who got my 3rd great grandmother pregnant and hope that with DNA we can at least get it down to one of four brothers.

[Nova67]

When my parents tested I activated the codes for their kits which probably made it a lot easier for access. Now my mother's first cousin has tested and has activated her own kit (she is not a subscriber) but does have a tree permission. I  am hoping it is as simple as her linking her result to my tree. Her kit is still processing.
My father (who is German) was in some DNA circles with people in Louisiana - I couldn't work it out as I thought you had to have mutual links in your trees.  Then the DNA circles just vanished after a while. Now says he is not in any.
People not replying at all and not having any tree linked is a problem.
I have my closest match as a 3rd Cousin to my mother and a 4th Cousin to me in the USA. I redid the research. I am pretty sure it is my 4th great uncle who went there, but lack of early BDM's in Ohio makes it difficult. The research has people living in England and America at the same time, kids born in both countries and the wrong father per three baptismal records - so not easy to figure out.  Copied across many trees. I have never heard back from the person (and I never told them about the rotten research).
I have worked out about six connections, some in the USA and some in Australia.  You do need to have a pretty extensive tree with all the side branches to be able to work it out. It is nice when it helps validates your research.

[Spw]

I just read about the DNA. I feel the same way. Disappionting I been with them for years now & they haven't really help me at all. I just check to see if I had any message or found any one new?
No messages & no one new. I would have to sign up for 6 more months to email to any other member now.   I hope you have better luck. spw

[lesleyhannah]

I don't feel so bad now I know other people have had disappointing results. Our match remains at one second cousin related to my ex-husband and who used to live round the corner from him. There are 76 'distant cousins' listed but most of them have private trees. Of those who have replied to my messages no-one has recognised any of the surnames on my tree. One American 'distant cousin' did have relatives with the same surname, but although he believed the family may have originated in Scotland he has no clues as to their whereabouts, and the first names of his ancestors are very different from mine (where the same names crop up every generation).
To be honest the only positive result is that two family anecdotes have turned out to be myths: our DNA shows no Jewish ancestry at all, nor is there any Spanish DNA traceable. Not sure I'd have paid so much money just to learn what I suspected anyway. Otherwise there are no surprises, either good or bad.