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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: LizzieL on Sunday 12 September 21 09:24 BST (UK)
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Has anyone else found the number of "new matches" on Ancestry dwindling rapidly recently? (It's on the Groups tab). I don't know how long they stay a new match - possibly a rolling fortnight. About 4 weeks ago I typically had 40 -50, (before the 6 and 7 cM cull, it was over a hundred), today when I checked it was 15 new matches OH had 19 new matches. (His matches have always been higher as his ancestors had larger families.) Has Ancestry done something connected to their "greater precision" or are we really just running out of new cousins who have had a DNA test? I tested in Jan 2019 and my husband a few months later (his first test failed and he had to repeat)
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Lizzie, not quite the same thing but you say your OH has more matches because he comes from large families but I don't think that makes any difference - well at least not in my family.
My sister and I are full siblings, I have 13,467 matches and she has 24,479 (data from shared DNA tab). There has always been this magnitude of difference.
Incidentally she has 44 new matches and I have 23!
Pheno
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Yes, I've noticed the numbers of new matches dwindling, I wonder if they've reduced the time that new matches stay on that list (they seem to go from there very quickly), but also I think there is a 'natural' lull around this time of year, then it picks up when the really good sale starts.
Actually I thought the numbers of new had stayed high longer this year, well into the summer.
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I know the size of the family is not the whole story, it depends on the interest the living descendants have in tracing their origins and doing a test. And in my experience anyway, those descendants whose ancestors emigrated or were transported tend to be more interested in their origins than those who remained in Britain.
But very interesting that you and your sister have such differences, I wish I could persuade my brother to test.
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I'm sure you're right LizzieL - that the number of new matches has dropped considerably.
Because I have spent the last couple of years looking at 20 to 30 unviewed matches per day, I reached the point about 3 months ago where I no longer had any unviewed matches. So now I am able to click on 'unviewed' and see, day by day, any new DNA tests with a match to me. Initially, I was getting about 10 new matches per day but about 3 weeks ago this started to decline to a mere trickle and now I have gone 3 days without *any* new matches.
So, yes, there are either fewer tests going through the pipeline or something else is afoot, perhaps connected to the 2021 precision update.
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Somebody told me today that Ancestry had said that they were not processing any new dna tests just recently until the September preccision update - so therefore no new matches.
Pheno
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I wondered why I had no new matches for a while! Thanks Pheno.
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Apparently, according to Ancestry it is related to their 'upcoming update to the Ethnicity Update'.. which should be completed by 17th September upon which we expect updates to return to normal'
Another improvement that causes nothing but annoyance? They say the Ethnicity Update is currently being rolled out to all users - has anyone got it yet?
Gill
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I haven't got it yet, and I'm not particularly interested either. The genetic communities only depend on how many relations on a particular branch have tested and bothered to put up trees giving locations. I am linked to only one genetic community in Hampshire and Isle of Wight. That is correct for one quarter of my ancestors,. Another quarter is from Yorkshire, another from Berks / Oxon border. The remaining quarter is split with one half from Sussex and the other from Jersey. The Jersey group are further complicated by a Scot and a suspected Scot marrying two of my ancestresses.
I have a lot of matches with descendants of one of my Berks lines who emigrated to Canada, but few of them have trees, and those who do, don't go back any further than the person who emigrated. That's probably why Ancestry doesn't pick up that location as a genetic community.
I suspect that if I stopped my tree at the sibling of the emigrant, I would be connected to a genetic community in Canada.
Has anyone tried making an alternative tree - no false information but with less than their main tree - and seeing how that changes thrulines / common ancestors etc? Maybe ... on the next rainy day!
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Apparently, according to Ancestry it is related to their 'upcoming update to the Ethnicity Update'.. which should be completed by 17th September upon which we expect updates to return to normal'
Another improvement that causes nothing but annoyance? They say the Ethnicity Update is currently being rolled out to all users - has anyone got it yet?
Gill
Is that 17th September this year, start or end of the day, and which time zone? Nothing has changed for me yet and also no matches for weeks. Even MH and FTDNA are outpacing Ancestry on that score.
EDIT: Utah is seven hours behind the UK so it could be 18th or 19th for European countries.