What is best ancestry dna test
What is the Best DNA Company? (2020 Genetic Genealogy Review)
One of the most popular questions that I'm asked is "what is the best genetic
genealogy website?" and the answer really depends on what it is you want to get
out of your DNA test. Today I'm gonna give you my updated view of what I think
the best genetic genealogy website is.
Howdy, I'm Andy Lee with family history fanatics where we help you understand
your DNA, climb your family tree, and write the story of your ancestors along
the way. Today we're talking about genetic genealogy websites. And what are
the criteria that make a really good website? Well let me first preface this
whole video by saying it really depends on you and so as you're seeing my
ratings it may be different for you and I encourage you to go to the spreadsheet
that I have linked in the description and change the numbers up based on your
personal preferences to see which website you think is the best. There are
three major criteria that I think make a good genetic genealogy website, the very
first one is matches. If you're doing genetic genealogy you need to match with
other people DNA by itself is of no use you need to have somebody else's DNA to
see if you match and so the number of matches plays a big role in how good of
a genetic genealogy website it is. Now the second thing is the tools, if all you
can do is see matches and you're not going to get much out of it you have to
have some tools to be able to do different types of comparisons to see
who you share in common with all sorts of different things so the tools
that websites offer is another big component of genetic genealogy. And the
last one is collaboration really all of genealogy should be a big pool of
collaboration we all have information and we're all related we're all
researching ancestors that interconnect with other people so there's got to be a
way to collaborate with other people on the genetic genealogy website otherwise
you're just doing it in a silo and you're probably not going to get as
much out of it as you would with collaboration. So in 2018 and 2019 I did
a couple of reviews of the different websites and came up with who my winners
were for each year and so this year's no different, but there's going to be
changes just like every year I'm refining my formula some things don't
mean as much to me and so it's a little bit hard to compare from year to year,
but let me go over some of the changes from the 2019 formula. First off I
removed the multiple kit criteria and the phasing criteria, now this is not to
say that these two things were not important, because they're still you know
somewhat important, but when I look at it from a you know what do I do for genetic
genealogy they're not that important and they're not used as much and that may be
because from a phasing standpoint I've already got everything situated between
my paternal and my maternal side as far as who matches who and then there's
other methods that are better than just a simple maternal-paternal phasing. For
instance like the Leeds method or clustering now that allow you to group
your matches in much more compact and much better forms than just separating
out maternal paternal, but that's a good starting place but it's not gonna have a
place in my formula anymore. At least not this year maybe I'll add it back in next
year. Now the next thing is I changed the weighting factor how much each of these
criteria is worth to the overall score and I've played around with this a lot
and I'm still not fully satisfied with where I have it but I think it reflects
something close to what you know in my actual practice I think is most
important. Now that some of these companies are getting to have large
databases one of the things that I'm noticing is the increase inside doesn't
always reflect more matches to me. Now this is because some of these companies
are doing a lot of outreach to places the world where I don't have any close
relatives or at least ancestors that might be within the last ten generations.
For instance, the databases start up focused on the United States is where
most of the people were from and the United States primarily is made up of
different populations from Europe that emigrated over as well as some of the
Native American populations and some Sub-Saharan African populations. One of
the major populations that wasn't represented really well was the Asian
populations and that is more than half of the population of the world
so as these databases grow in size as they do outreach to Asia
I'm not going to necessarily see any matches even though this database size
is increasing and it can increase enormously without really affecting my
matches and so I've arbitrarily limited the database size. And the last thing is
I've updated of course each of the websites ratings for each one of the
categories they've all had different changes over the last year where they've
added some features and some features have been taken away and so I've had to
relook at each one of these and decide on what the new rating is going to be. So
let's start off and let's describe something that is really important for
genealogy and mentioned it already and that is collaboration.
Now collaboration is not a category that I'm awarding points to in and of itself
but collaboration affects a couple of the other categories. So what do I mean
by collaboration? I mean how much genealogical activity is happening on these
sites and it's different for every website because each website doesn't
necessarily have the same focus for instance ancestry and my heritage
started off as tree websites and the DNA was added later. On the other hand
23andme started off as a DNA website and they've had a tree before with my
heritage and then that was gotten rid of and now they've got a new tree
functionality. So you can see that this is actually a little bit difficult to
create a criteria between these different websites and it's really
loosely based on tree activity how many people put trees in and whether or not
those trees have enough people that you might be able to find a common match
from, but I'll be honest this figure is pretty much
yeah. It's gonna change greatly between person to persons so if you go again to
the spreadsheet and see how I calculated it you can pull up your own information
and you might come up with vastly different numbers and that's okay.
Now what this resulted for me was it created a multiplier from about 0.25 to
about 0.62 that I'm using with the number of matches and the quality
matches which I'll get to in a second and basically what this does is this
actually brings those two numbers down more so that they are comparable with
some of the other criteria. Let's get started and go through each one of the
criteria and who the winner of that category was so we can find out who the
overall best genetic genealogy company is. The first one is database size I said
at the beginning that matches are important and then database size then is
going to have to be important it constitutes 25% of your overall score
and what I'm doing for this is I'm taking the number of millions of kits in
that database and multiplying it by that collaboration score and that's going to
give me a value that is added into the total score. I mentioned before that I
limited this to about 13 million kits because what I'm saying is you know
beyond that I'm not seeing as much matches as I would otherwise I think it
is because these companies are doing more outreach, which is great for those
people who are from some of those populations in Africa and the Middle
East and in Asia where we haven't had a lot of testing already. So which company
ended up with the best score here well you probably guessed it and that is
ancestry now ancestry has the largest database and they also have a fairly
active population that puts trees on their databases links that DNA to trees
and so they end up with a score of 5.3. So good job to ancestry you're the winner
of this category the next category is called the quality match and this is
something that I made up myself and it is 40%. It is the most
important attribute of a database so when you're thinking about you know
where you want to go one of the things to look for is quality match. Now what do
I mean by a quality match? Well I mean that it is the number of matches between
35 centimorgans and 600 centimorgans. That means that there's a likelihood
you're going to be able to find out how you are related within a genealogical
time frame. Now it doesn't mean that if there's matches less than this you're
not gonna find out how you're related it's just that this group of matches is
much more likely that you're going to be able to identify that specific
relationship. Now the quality match score is created by taking the number of
quality matches and dividing it by the millions of kits in the database. So if
you have more quality matches with a smaller database you can actually have a
very high-quality match score. One thing to bear in mind is if you're using
Family Tree DNA data you need to make sure that you actually correct that by
removing out these small segments so for instance you may have some matches that
look like they are 70, 80, 100, maybe even 150 centimorgans but once you
remove out those small matches they may only be twenty or thirty centimorgans.
That's a big difference because it goes from a quality match to just one of your
lower centimorgan matches so before you use the family tree data then make sure
you correct that information and the winner of the quality match score
actually it's family tree despite the fact that you actually have to correct
for the amount of centimorgans that they're reporting they still have the
highest quality match score and they get a score of one point seven eight in the
quality match category so congratulations to Family Tree DNA for
winning this category one caveat I'm going to mention though is Family Tree
DNA is the only company that does not report their database size now I use the
database sizes based on lay Larkins most recent blog about what the sizes of the
different databases are Family Tree DNA information is estimated around 1.15
million turns out that that's actually provides a quality match score that's
double what almost all the other companies are so it could be that family
tree DNA's database size is actually closer to two to two-and-a-half million
unless they actually release those numbers we're just gonna have to go off
of their estimate so the next category is triangulation now I've talked about
triangulation a lot there's several videos on this channel about
triangulation I like to teach people about triangulation this constitutes 15%
of the overall score and it's because it is a really powerful tool to verify that
you have matches who are related to a common ancestor so what does this score
made up of it's really the ability to triangulate segments on that website so
when you start thinking about this you got to have a chromosome browser to be
able to actually see the segment data some of the companies actually have some
automatic triangulation that is very helpful for it and that of course
increases their score so who's going to be the winner
well it's actually jet match is the winner they get a score of three and
that's just because they have several different tools all that can be used for
triangulation and some of these tools are free some of them you can pay for on
their tier one but you can triangulate segments with any of your kits with
other people on Jed match and that's why they get a score of three the next
category is the transfer category this is actually one I was toying with taking
out of the whole equation but I decided to leave it in for now
because it is a great money-saving opportunity if you've tested at ancestry
and 23andme they don't allow transfers so the only way to get into those
databases to test with them so you're paying for the regular cost of a DNA kit
however to get into the JED match and the Family Tree DNA and the my heritage
DNA databases you can transfer in for free now some of them limit you as to
the number of tools but for just a small fee which is not as much as the cost of
a new kit you can have full access to all of those websites so then this is
based on the ability to transfer in and to use tools and so on
23andme and ancestry they both get a zero for this category because they
don't allow that transfer but who's the winner
well it's Jed match again and this is because while you can transfer in for
free for the others they usually only give you matches for that transfer kit
with Jed match you still get to use all of their free tools which you would be
able to use no matter what now you can also upgrade for the Tier one tools if
you want it's sort of like you can pay for that transfer kit to be able to
access tools on Family Tree DNA and my heritage but for right now I'm giving
Jed match a score of two which wins them this category the last category this is
my favorite I like to call the x-factor and this is 15 percent of the overall
score and the x-factor is great because I can make it whatever I want and you
can make it whatever you want to but for me I look at all the different tools on
the website how they integrate together and how you can use those in genetic
genealogy so which website is going to win I think this should be obvious that
it's Jed match dead match hands-down has the most amount of tools when you're
talking about the free ones or when you're talking about the paid ones they
do lots of things and in several cases they do things in many different ways so
that while you may not be able to find your match or you may not be able to
find the exact relationship using a certain tool there may be another tool
that you can use to help you with that they also have a lot of tools that
nobody else has and so hands down I think Jed match wins this x-factor
category with a score of 3 let me point out though this is not to say that the
other companies don't all have their advantages because they do so I'd
encourage you to go and take a look at what extra things you can get with each
one of the different companies so that is all of the different categories now
you may be thinking well which websites did you actually look at and I've loaded
it right now to 6 websites living DNA Family Tree DNA my heritage ancestry
23andme and now most of those five of those in fact
all are testing companies and one of them is not it's just a third-party
tools in the future I plan on adding other companies like Borland genetics or
DNA land but right now because the size of their database just does not allow
that many matches to show up I find the websites are great for
certain individual things but just as a general I haven't decided to add them in
yet so with that said let's go through our countdown of which company is the
best starting with number six and number six right now I'd say is living DNA now
living DNA is one of the newest companies I just did a review video a
few weeks ago on living DNA and they're still you know having some bumps as they
get out of the out of the gate there I've got one match so when you think
about genetic genealogy if you only have one match or like my wife zero matches
it's very difficult to do genetic genealogy without any matches so living
DNA needs to increase the size of their database they need to get their matching
algorithms better if they want to be able to move up this list let's go on to
number two which is Family Tree DNA now family tree two you name one one of
those categories but unfortunately some of the other categories they fell behind
on particularly in their database size which was 25% of the overall score they
are the smallest of the databases now again this is based on estimated values
so it's possible that if they released what their actual database size and they
would be larger and they might get a better score but for right now I'm just
going off of the estimated values cuz I don't have anything else to go off of
so they come in at number five and that's gonna lead us now to number three
now you say what about number four well we got a tie for a third two companies
ended up with the exact same score and those two are 23andme and jed match and
then these are two companies I use a lot they have a lot of tools they have good
matching 23andme is actually the second largest database they've been around I
think they were the original ones that did autosomal testing as well so 23andme
and jet matched I for third place in second place I know
the tensions just mounting who's gonna win well it's my heritage now this may
be a surprise for many of you because when I was going through each one of the
categories my heritage did not show up on there however my heritage was usually
in second place in almost all of these categories and so just because they are
not number one in anything yet doesn't mean that overall they don't still get a
really high score and in my hair just case they do now their database has been
growing it's about I think twice the amount of DNA kits as there were a year
last time I did this review a little over a year ago so I expect that they're
going to continue to increase their score and they may take the number one
spot in 2021 we'll have to see so that leaves number one and who's going to be
number one its ancestry for the second year in a row I'm actually reading
ancestry as the best in a genealogy website and really the reason is is
because of their massive database and the massive amount of people that are
building trees that are you know attaching that DNA to trees and so there
is a lot of collaboration in it and those two the the quality match score
and the database size score while they're related they do should look at
different things but that's 65 percent of your overall score and ancestry was
the top in one of them and near the top in one of the others so they get the
number one spot in 2020 if you haven't tested with ancestry I'd encourage you
to test with ancestry now that I've given you my ratings why don't you put
in the comments below which company you think is the best
is it 23andme my heritage living DNA Family Tree DNA ancestry Jed match or
one of the other companies that I haven't even rated on here I mentioned a
couple of things in this video if you want to see how to correct your family
tree DNA then go to this video up here and if you want to see my last review of
the different companies then just go to this video right down here and make sure
that you subscribe to this channel and click on the bell if you want to be
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