Ancestry – Lots of people build trees at Ancestry, so there should be plenty of potential people who might share DNA with you. There are country specific sites. Ian considers one major failing at Ancestry is the inability to see detailed information about shared DNA, i.e. which chromosome and where on the chromosome you share DNA.
GEDmatch – Extends the number of possible shared DNA matches, as people who may have tested at a different DNA testing company can post their results here. Some caveats as GEDmatch has been hacked in the past:
- Sign up for a free email address at Google, Yahoo etc. as your email will displayed to other users of GEDmatch
- Use a pseudonym as your name will also be visible to other users, if someone does share DNA with you, they can still email you, without giving away too much information initially
One particularly useful function on GEDmatch that is free, is “People who match both, or 1 of 2 kits”, this function works if you provide 2 kit numbers, by building a list of people that share DNA with each of the provided kit numbers, then looking to see if there are people in common on the 2 lists. The function is useful as you can find people that share common DNA with both kits, though you might not share DNA with them on the same chromosome or same segment area.
GEDMatch also offers what they call “Tier 1 Tools” for a monthly fee, which offers more powerful / useful tools than the free ones, a couple examples being “Combine multiple kits into 1 superkit” & “Segment Search”, Ian took advantage of these tools and created a superkit by merging his Ancestry and 23andMe autosomal tests at GEDmatch.
FamilytreeDNA – Offers 3 main types of DNA tests:
- Family Finder which is an Autosomal DNA test, this is test offered by Ancestry and MyHeritage
- Y-DNA this is a test that for DNA that is passed from father to son and changes very slowly compared to autosomal DNA
- mtDNA (Mitochondrial) this DNA is passed from mother to child
FamilytreeDNA Family Finder DNA is similar to MyHeritage, by allowing people to upload DNA from another DNA testing company and unlock it for comparison etc. for a nominal fee.
If you already have known relatives with tests at FTDNA, you should identify them and make use of the DNA phasing feature. The phasing feature can suggest sometimes whether someone you share DNA with is on your Maternal / Paternal side or shared on both.
WikiTree – A free, shared social-networking genealogy website, which allows users to individually to research and to contribute to their own personal family trees. Whilst building your own tree you are also collaborating on a singular worldwide family tree within the same system. Quite a lot of people also share their GEDMatch kit identities, on this site, making this website a useful resource.
23andMe – Offers Ancestry and Health DNA tests. Ian hasn’t tried the Health DNA test, but did do an autosomal test here. 23andMe and Ancestry are two of the main companies that will not allow a DNA test to be uploaded from another DNA test company. One major drawback currently with 23andMe is the limit on only being able to have 1501 relatives with shared DNA, so as newer tests are taken, someone you share a lesser amount of DNA with may disappear from your list. Ian also thinks the genealogy tools at 23andMe are limited compared to some other companies. One positive is that 23andMe allows you to compare detailed segment data consisting of matching chromosomes and start and end positions of shared DNA.
DNA-Explained – A really useful website providing information about genetic genealogy, the site is run by Roberta Estes. It came as a bit of a surprise that Joseph, Jane’s father, Joseph shares DNA with someone connected to Roberta’s family tree.
ScotlandsPeople – Invaluable for searching for Scottish ancestors, lots of records are available
Geneanet – We have found some people on this website that haven’t tested elsewhere
#AncestryHour – Genealogy Networking for Professionals and Amateur Family History Researchers. Meets and Chats Live on Twitter using the #AncestryHour every Tuesday at 19:00