So many opportunities - which are good?

[Eric Hatfield]

I and 3 of my relatives have had autosomal testing with FTDNA. Living and/or born in Australia means we have fewer potential matches, so we have to maximise our opportunities.

I have uploaded results to Gedmatch, and one set of results to Geni and DNALand. And I think it is also possible to upload results to MyHeritage, and perhaps other places also.

I'm starting to lose track, and am unsure whether all or any of these third party sites are likely to be much help in finding new matches.

Has anyone else found them useful, or not useful? Thanks.

[Ruskie]

I think your place of birth is not relevant to the number of matches you have. This is related to the number of those who have taken DNA tests, the majority of who are Americans. So any matches are more likely to be with Americans.

Once the numbers who test increase, you may find more useful matches. I have several matches through my FF test at fTDNA. Some have not replied to my messages, with one we could not find the connection, and a recent one ended up being a known x cousin who I had previously been in contact with, found via a paper trail  - good to know the test was accurate though. 

I think if you have no, or few, matches, there is nothing that can be done apart from waiting and hoping that eventually a match comes along. I have little experience with third party sites, so will be interested to see what useful information others can give so I may get some hints and tips for my own tests. 

Good luck.

[Eric Hatfield]

Thanks for your thoughts. Place of birth is relevant because, as you say, most people who have tested are Americans. That means if we have a common ancestor, it will most likely have been back in the UK, many generations ago, which makes it hard to identify the connection (believe me, I have looked at quite a few of these). So just like people say it is best to test with several different companies, so I think it may help to upload results to several different companies. I have done so at Geni (apparently, I actually can't remember now) and I'm wondering whether also uploading to MyHeritage would be any value.