AncestryDNA Changes Are Coming

Several genetic genealogy bloggers were on a telephone call with AncestryDNA and passed along what they learned.  Changes are coming soon to AncestryDNA.

For some of the recent blog posts, see:

*  Upcoming Ancestry DNA Update – Urgent!!! by Roberta Estes on the DNAeXplained -- Genetic Genealogy blog.

*  AncestryDNA Alert by Judy G. Russell on The Legal Genealogist blog.

*  AncestryDNA Plans Update to Matching Algorithm by Blaine Bettinger on The Genetic Genealogist blog.

*  New Advances in DNA Science Coming Your Way on the Ancestry.com Blog.

According to these blog posts, if you tested with AncestryDNA, then:

*  You will lose some matches, but there will be new matches due to the new matching algorithms

*  You may lose DNA circles and New Ancestral Discoveries (NADs)

*  Some 4th cousin matches may be redefined to distant cousin, and be removed from your DNA Circles.

Roberta's blog post suggested things to do.  I have been doing them.

Here are my current AncestryDNA test results:

Apparently, the Ethnicity Estimate is not changing at this time.  They said at RootsTech 2016 that their reference populations were changing, from 3000 persons to 9000 persons, and that the estimate would likely change.

*  I have 109 Shared Ancestry Hints - those are other AncestryDNA testers who I match DNA with and have an Ancestry Member Tree with common ancestors to my tree.

*  I have 188 4th cousins or closer, but many of those don't have a common ancestor in their tree with my tree.  Some - maybe 10-15% don't have an Ancestry Member Tree, or have a private tree.

*  I have 132 pages of DNA matches (over 6,550 matches!) who share 5 centiMorgans or more with me.

*  I have three New Ancestry Discoverieis who I am 99.99999999999% sure are not related to me.

*  I have six DNA Circles - four for my Richman/Rich family in England, and two for my Hildreth/Keyes family in New England.

*  I have been adding Notes for my Shared Ancestry Hints to identify the common ancestors for these matches.  Here is the screen showing the process:

The note I wrote was:

"5.6 cM shared - common ancestor is 6th great-grandfather Richard Cutter"

When I save the note, it will appear when I click the Note icon.  It will also save this relationship for me when the new system is implemented.

*  I also starred the persons on the Shared Ancestor Hint list so that I don't lose those matches, even though the relationship is changed.

So Ancestry.com, bring on your changes, I'm ready!  And I can hardly wait until you increase the number of people in the Reference populations, because I think your ethnicity estimates are wrong for me.  While you're at it, would you please add a Chromosome browser so we can see where we have identical DNA segments with several of our matches?

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