GEDmatch doesn't test your DNA, but you can still find cousins and a whole lot more. So
what is actually in the GEDmatch database? Howdy, I'm Andy with Family History Fanatics, and this is
a segment of DNA. Be sure to subscribe to our channel and click on the bell if you want to
be notified about upcoming episodes. GEDmatch is a database that you can submit your raw DNA files to
and be able to match with the 1.2 million other people who have submitted their files already.
GEDmatch is not a testing company. You can't buy a DNA kit from them. All you can do is upload the
data from the other testing companies. Now, why would you want to do that? First off GEDmatch
has some different tools and them different way to analyze and look at your DNA and be able to
match with other people. The second reason is that for some of the companies, the only way
to match with people in their database is to be in their database. Namely, 23andMe and Ancestry don't
allow transfers of outside DNA kits into their databases. Considering that these two companies
have 75% of all the DNA tests that have been done. If you're not in one of those databases,
you could be missing out on dozens or even hundreds of potential matches. GEDmatch was a
solution to this problem by allowing uploads from all of the companies. However, it is still up to
each individual to choose whether or not they want to upload their information to GEDmatch.
And based on the size of GEDmatch, at 1.2 million, less than 10% of all the DNA test kits that have
been made have been uploaded to GEDmatch. I wanted to get an idea of which customers of which company
used GEDmatch the most and in order to do this. I had to extract some information from the GEDmatch
database. Now GEDmatch labels with kit according to the company you test at, an A for Ancestry,
an M for 23andMe, an H for MyHeritage, and a T for FamilyTreeDNA. To figure out how many total
tests were from each company, I needed a large set of valid kit numbers, and then I could count up
the number of A's, M's, T's, and H's. I managed several kits at GEDmatch. And so for each one,
I did a one-to-many match, and this gave me 2,000 kit numbers for each one of them.
I stuck all these numbers in a spreadsheet, removed all the duplicates, and ended up with
almost 21,000 unique kit numbers. Then it was a simple matter of adding up all the A's, T's,
M's, and H's. Now, this chart shows what those results were. You can see that Ancestry has the
most number of kits in the database. Followed by 23andMe. And then FamilyTreeDNA. And lastly,
MyHeritage. There is also the other category which includes kits from LivingDNA, from WeGene. As well
as some other companies. And includes kits that have been manufactured like the ones that law
enforcement use. Or my combined kit where I actually took the information from all of my
tests and combined them into one kit. The other category is a really small percentage of all the
kits on GEDmatch. So I'm not going to discuss it much here. Now the order of the top four companies
is mostly unsurprising. Ancestry is the largest, with about 10 million. And then 23andMe with about
5 million. Now MyHeritage recently overtook FamilyTreeDNA with about 2 million samples
compared to FamilyTreeDNA is 1.5 million samples. So that was the only place where the amount of
kits on GEDmatch doesn't match the actual size of the different companies databases. But when
you compare the percentage of samples in the shed match database to the percentage of overall DNA
samples that each company has, you start to see some interesting numbers. Both Ancestry
and FamilyTreeDNA have a larger representation in the GEDmatch database. Then you would expect
just from their overall database size. 23andMe is less represented. And at the very bottom is
MyHeritage which is far below we expect based on their database size. Now why this disparity? I
can think of a few reasons, but it doesn't cover everything. First FamilyTreeDNA has always been
the genetic genealogy company that caters to the serious genetic genealogist. So it stands
to reason that those people would be the first to adopt shared match. And be the most willing to put
their information on GEDmatch. But that can't be the reason why Ancestry is over-represented in the
GEDmatch database because a lot of their marketing is targeted towards the casual user of genealogy
or even the ones that are just getting a genetic genealogy test for the ethnicity results. So I
really can't think of a reason that explains Ancestry over-representation in the GEDmatch
database. Now 23andMe has always had genealogy as a secondary function of their DNA gathering. So I
would expect them to be underrepresented. MyHeritage is a conundrum because I would
expect that their clientele would at least be as interested in genealogy and genetic genealogy as
Ancestry's clientele is, yet they far underperform when it comes to submitting to GEDmatch. Since
MyHeritage is the youngest of the genetic genealogy testing companies, it might be that
a majority of their clientele have already tested at one of the other companies. And so there's no
need to submit another test to GEDmatch. Or another explanation is that they might have
just had so much recent growth that a lot of their customers haven't even had the opportunities to
submit their information to GEDmatch. Maybe in another year, when I redo this analysis,
I can see whether or not anything has changed. That would help me to understand why MyHeritage
seems to be so underrepresented in the shared match database. So with these numbers, I also
wanted to see what percentage of each company's clients have submitted their information in to
GEDmatch. So first, I figured out how many samples in the GEDmatch database come from each company,
and then I divided that number by the total of each company's database. And you can see
that over 11% of FamilyTreeDNA's customers have uploaded their information to GEDmatch, while only
1.4% of MyHeritage's customers have uploaded to GEDmatch. Ideally, I'd like all these numbers to
be really close to 100%, but even if all of the companies were only at 11% like FamilyTreeDNA,
then the GEDmatch database would double in size. And it would be that much more useful. So if you
haven't uploaded to the GEDmatch database, I'd urge you to go and check it out. It's free to
upload and use their basic toolset. And I have videos with links in the description below on
how to download your raw DNA file and upload those to GEDmatch. As always, if you have any
questions about the GEDmatch database, put it in the comments below, and I'll try to answer it for
you and if you like this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up and pass it on to your friends.