Could the Golden Age of DNA Testing Be Over?

[rsel]

The optimist in me says that we have not yet even reached the Golden age :-)  If/when the sales/marketing teams stop driving the development of the tool sets offered to DNA users (i.e. less on making new ethnicity estimates, DNA traits, etc, and more on tools to help proper research), then i think we could enter the golden age, as we can start making more break thru's on matches/relationships.
For example i have roughly 20k matches on ancestry, but i have only successfully identified around 120 of them, which is a poor hit rate.  If i had access to a proper chromosome browser  and clustering tools, i could probably increase that by a factor of 10

[Petros]

For me the biggest issue is the increasing numbers of new matches with no trees, a public tree consisting of 1, 2, or 3 private entries, or a completely private tree.

I don't think I've had any really important matches for a year on any of the three trees I manage.

And many have no shared matches either!

[SouthseaSteel]

Like I say, its a fascinating business.  The cash flow for the DNA business must presumably come mainly from new kits and not (yet) value adding services for established users.  It definitely seems, and many comments confirm it, that the majority of recent kits are being used by people who dont have a particular interest in genealogy nor matches - just ethnicity or worse it was a gift kit bought in a sale.  That type of customer is not the basis of a sustainable business.  Obviously some of those folks will be "converted" in time but how many??

Keeping that balance of growth and value for two quite different customers and in an ever more complex and multi regional legislative background is very tricky indeed.  Good luck to them!! 

[Biggles50]

What do people want out of their DNA test?

We want it to validate ourGenealogical research and for the results to help us to break down the Brickwalls.

Others, and probably the vast majority want to learn about the Admixture (Ethnicity).

We now see other features like Traits being offered and this has the potential to be huge.  Especially when said Traits can give early warnings of potential health issues, early enough to take precautions to minimise the possible effects.

Early days for this at present but who knows where it will be in five years time?

[coombs]

One day autosomal DNA testing may advance even more and you could perhaps get links to someone with a common ancestor back in the 1500s. But there may soon be a limit to genetic genealogy testing.

For example my ancestor Dennis Helsdon born 1756 in Norfolk. I know who his grandparents were (Henry Helsdon, Susan Riches, Benjamin Harbord and Mary Buddery) and 4 of his great grandparents, (the parents of Henry Helsdon and Ben Harbord) but not the 2 known great grandmother's maiden names. One day DNA advances may give the answer if any of their descendants test. But as for the documents/paper trail, I think I myself have gone back as far as I can go unless we one day get a Norfolk Wills beneficiaries index which may mention them.

[brigidmac]

To increase chance of getting replies I often offer information to matches with small trees . For example
Did you know your grandmother's maiden name was

Or tell them I'm looking for a particular branch and if they are related to X
( person showing in several trees )
Or if they have relatives from a small village.
I get replies back frequently from adoptees and we manage to assist each other by looking at shared matches

By the way Hugh C
Ethnicity is NOT just guesswork .
It's very useful

I think people who have ancestors from only 1 area may be dismissive if it but when your ancestors or your matches ancestors are from different countries it really does play a big part

[TonyV]

Like others above I have not had any matches nearer than 3rd-4th cousins on any of the several sites my test is on for more than 3 years. However, being on several sites means that I can see how many others have followed the same advice to place their tests on multiple sites. That of course means that you cannot add the databases together to get the total number of people who have tested.

It is interesting nevertheless to see that Ancestry is still well ahead of the others and that its test database growth in 2023 was still accelerating.

I had not heard about dog testing before reading this, but I'm not surprised and maybe it's not fair to be cynical about it being a reflection of the dog-ownership madness that was caused by Covid apparently. The breeding of livestock, race horses etc. needs to avoid in-breeding, so ensuring that this doesn't happen using science like DNA is quite common. I can't see why this shouldn't be true of dog breeding as well.

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

The downside is that many fall for the marketing thinking they will get an instant tree so the pool of genuine researchers isn't as large as the test numbers indicate.
On top of that the  issue of the 'copy regardless' is ever present. I couldn't make it any clearer on my tree or through 3 acknowledged messages that my great grandmother though married fell pregnant to another man (hence a pile of matches on the Isle of Wight where the father finished up), but my closest matches just copy other trees based on a household in the 1891 and 1901 census so have the wrong ancestors. They may as well skip the dna test for all the notice they take of the results and just go with the majority of tree  just as they do anyway.

I think a further issue is that low response rates to messages just drives the research to working out links to matches further underground to the point where lone research is the default starting point and can remain the prefered method.

[SouthseaSteel]

The downside is that many fall for the marketing thinking they will get an instant tree so the pool of genuine researchers isn't as large as the test numbers indicate.
On top of that the  issue of the 'copy regardless' is ever present. I couldn't make it any clearer on my tree or through 3 acknowledged messages that my great grandmother though married fell pregnant to another man (hence a pile of matches on the Isle of Wight where the father finished up), but my closest matches just copy other trees based on a household in the 1891 and 1901 census so have the wrong ancestors. They may as well skip the dna test for all the notice they take of the results and just go with the majority of tree  just as they do anyway.

I think a further issue is that low response rates to messages just drives the research to working out links to matches further underground to the point where lone research is the default starting point and can remain the prefered method.

Totally agree.  Not only do they want an instant tree, they want all the celebrities within it clearly identified.

This whole DNA Ancestry process gives an insight into how people around the world think and behave and it has convinced me that as a dwindling number of people get much smarter and smarter a much larger growing number get dumber and dumber.