Have you taken a DNA test and you're looking at your match list and there's
thousands if not tens of thousands of potential people who match DNA with you?
Well today I'm going to show you five ways that you can reduce the
overwhelming number of matches on your DNA match list.
Howdy i'm Andy Lee with
family history fanatics where we help you understand your DNA, climb your
family tree, and write your ancestors stories along the way. If you've looked
at any of your match lists unless you are somebody from a population that is
really genetically different than most everyone else you probably have
thousands of people on your match list. And a lot of people when they're first
looking at this wonder, where should I start? So let's go over five strategies
you can use to help reduce the number of matches that you're looking at. So if
you've used any of these techniques that I'm gonna tell you about tell me about
your success in the comments below. The 1st one is look at those close matches
first and this seems really obvious the amount of DNA you share with somebody is
an indication of how closely related you are to them so you should start with
those most closely related to you. Now as a general rule particularly for
beginners I'd start off with those who share at least 100 centimorgans of DNA.
Many of these people are going to be second cousins or closer and so that's
only your great-grandparents that you have to know about and match up with
their great-grandparents. In a lot of cases you can actually identify who the
common ancestor is for those matches who share 100 centimorgans or more. Now after
you've exhausted this list and for some people you may not have many matches
over 100 centimorgans. Then start looking at those who share at least 40
centimorgans or more with you. Now you're not always going to be able to find how
these people are related to you, but what you can do is you can start grouping
these people together that form basic family groups and as you research more
you know to research certain matches all together because you all share
DNA in common. Now while some second cousins once removed or so may share 47
centimorgans there's also some fourth fifth six or even seven cousins that might
share 40 centimorgans or more. So there's a broad range of ancestors that you're
going to have to be researching in order to find common ancestors among these
matches. So since the 1st one was really easy let's go to the 2nd one,
which is a little bit more difficult, but it still will help to narrow down your
match list and that is triangulation. Now for those of you who have not heard of
triangulation, triangulation is when you have at least three matches you and two
others who each match each other all on the same segment. So you match person a
and you match person B and person a matches person B all on the same segment
this means that you are triangulated. The great thing about a triangulated group
is that these people all share a common ancestor. Now there are some exceptions
where you can have a triangular group but they don't share a common ancestor
and if you're using really small segments you might have a triangulated
group whose common ancestor is too far back in time to be able to identify it
through other genealogical methods. But for the most part if you're dealing with
triangulated groups that share a segment of at least 15 centimorgans or more
you're probably going to be able to identify a common ancestor in the last
five to ten generations. That doesn't mean that DNA is going to do the work
for you, you still have to go and do the research in other genealogical records
so that all three or more of your trees are built back to that common ancestor.
But what you may find is that only about 20% of your matches triangulate with
some other match so you've reduced the number of matches you need to look at
significantly let's go back to another easy method and that is
shared matches with your close relatives. Now every company has a shared matches
list they call it by different things sometimes it's called in common with,
sometimes it's called shared matches, sometimes it's shared in common with, but
they all mean the same thing. It means that you and another person both match
this third person. Now it's different from triangulation because you may match
on different segments but you both match and that's the important part here. I
like to use my first or second cousins that have also had their DNA tested to
help narrow down a search. What this tells me is that if it's my first cousin
any matches we both share in common we would have to be related through one of
my two sets of grandparents. So I basically eliminated half of my family
tree not only that that first cousin and me don't necessarily share all the same
matches that I matched through those grandparents. It's only the ones we share
in common so it's a great way to take this big giant match list and narrow it
down into something much smaller much more manageable. Now if its second
cousins it's going to be your great-grandparents that you share so
that's even further dividing how much of your family tree you need to be looking
at. For those of you who are lucky enough to have half relationships whether it's
a half sibling, a half aunt, or a half cousin this is even better because it
can narrow it down even further. For instance with my first cousin I have two
grandparents that all of our matches are probably related through, however if I
have a half first cousin then all of those common matches are going to be
related through just one of those two grandparents so either my grandmother or
my grandfather. So I've narrowed it down even further that's why half
relationships are wonderful for doing genetic geneology. Geneology doesn't have
to be difficult it doesn't have to be any more difficult than you want it to
be and sometimes in fact a lot of times I like
to look for the very low hanging fruit and that would be those matches who have
trees attached to them. This is great because somebody else has already
started doing some research now it doesn't mean that their tree is going to
be accurate but it means that somebody is actually put forth some effort to lay
out what their family genealogy is. Most online programs are going to do an
automatic comparison of your tree and the others tree so for instance with
ancestry and with my heritage they will give you hints as to which people might
be a common ancestor based on the fact that you have the same people in both of
your trees. Other companies like Ged match they have a way that you can
actually compare two gedcom files. So if you have your matches gedcom file and if
you have your gedcom file you can compare those and see are there any
people that match in your tree. Now after you've looked for specific people you
don't need to stop there you can also look for anybody that has a similar
surname or maybe even an odd first name that might just fall down in the family
but also places. Places are really important in genealogy before the
modern era and by that I mean I think it was 1976-1977 every ancestor that was
born had a mother and a father that were in the exact same place at the exact
same time. Which means in your trees you may find places that are common or even
close to other ancestors in your matches tree. So even though you don't have the
same people you might start to see that hey these families actually lived close
together and that might be where you want to start your research. It doesn't
mean that that's where your common ancestor is but it's a good clue to
start and eliminate it or find some more information to show that it really is
the case. So with those four strategies you're going to be able to eliminate
your list quite a bit but there's another strategy that you
might want to try if you have DNA information from at least one of your
parents and that is use a phased match list. Now what a phase Match list does is
it separates out your paternal chromosome from your maternal chromosome
so then you can use those to actually match with other people that way you're
only looking at your paternal matches or you're only looking at your maternal
matches. In other words you've eliminated probably half of your match list but it
gets even better than that one of the problems with matches is that you can
actually zigzag between your maternal and your paternal chromosomes for a
matching segment it happens by chance a lot of times and the smaller the segment
the more likely that is to happen, but by phasing your kit in to the maternal side
and the paternal side and using that to compare with your matches you're not
only going to eliminate half of the matches that were on the other side but
you're also going to eliminate a lot of those false matches that were zigzagging
between those two chromosomes. So phased matching is a great way to eliminate a
lot of your matches including a lot of those false matches. This was the five
ways you can reduce the overwhelming number of matches that you have. You
don't have to be using every single one of these all the time you can use
different ones and combine them with each other as well. Now if you'd like to
learn more about phasing you can look at a video right here and if you want to
know a little bit more about DNA then why don't you try this playlist and see
what you can learn. If you like this video be sure to subscribe the channel
and leave a comment below.