What now? Some Advice

[pharmaT]

I received my ancestry DNA results yesterday and feel like a complete beginner again.  I understand the basics of the science behind DNA testing (at least I think I do) but unsure what to do with my matches.

Is it worth contacting potential matches  who don't have their tree linked?

Is it worth contacting people who haven't logged on for a bit, do I just ignore those 'matches'?

[davidft]

Who did you test with as that may affect what you can do next

Anyway assuming you tested with ftDNA i would say

1. Have you uploaded your tree, if not then people may be reluctant to contact you.
2. If you have not uploaded your tree and don't want to just yet what you could do is load surnames of your ancestors and their locations eg Smith (Kent), Janes (Sussex), Longworthy (Middlesex) etc and then if people have a match with you and see you have surnames in common this might encourage them to contact you
3. If you have not joined a sharing site like Gedmatch.com you might want to consider this as this will match you to people who tested with different testing companies to the one you used
4. I think before trying to contact people it would be good to spend some time looking at the matches you have made and looking at their trees if they have uploaded or searching on their surnames interests to see if there is anything in common
5. When you have done 4. above you will see some of your matches are potentially more promising than other and you could try searching for a likely matching point. This will be more easy for matches that are nearer to you than some of the more distant ones.
6. Armed with this you can try contacting people but best to do a few at a time so you can keep control of all the contacts, but be aware some people may take a time to reply, if at all
7. Finally a word of warning it can very difficult to make the match work because of either a weakness in your research or the other parties research so you have to be prepared for this

Good luck

[rsel]

Hi pharmaT,
   I have had my results from Ancestry just over a month, and like you was overwhelmed by the shear number of matches. I have adopted the following approach after a few weeks of experimenting.

I have reached out to most of my good/high matches, especially those with trees, just to start the ball rolling on getting connections. On the whole I have had responses from most of them, and have managed to turn at least one into a positive match.
On the moderate matches, I was very ruthless, and if they didn't have a tree, or only had a tree with 1/2 names on it and hadn't signed on for over a month, they got 'deleted' (as I know I get them back if needed).
For the others, I did a quick first pass through all the matches. If they shared any links with other matches, I flagged for follow up, and the same if they had name/place matches. I now intend to go back through all those flagged matches, trying to group them if they have shared matches so that could help narrowing down where the match occurs. I will probably start reaching out to some of these when I have some hint where we might have a connection,

Richard

[hurworth]

My suggestion would be to also upload your data to Gedmatch.  It has some good tools for analysing where you match on segments.  In general I have had a better reply rate from people on Gedmatch, as it is more likely to have people who are into genealogy.   

[rsel]

My suggestion would be to also upload your data to Gedmatch.  It has some good tools for analysing where you match on segments.  In general I have had a better reply rate from people on Gedmatch, as it is more likely to have people who are into genealogy.

I have done that, but to be honest I have not had very good results from there, only had the one response to an email, out of sending about 5 so far :-(

[jjtjr]

RE:

"My suggestion would be to also upload your data to Gedmatch.  It has some good tools for analysing where you match on segments.  In general I have had a better reply rate from people on Gedmatch, as it is more likely to have people who are into genealogy."

&

"I have done that, but to be honest I have not had very good results from there, only had the one response to an email, out of sending about 5 so far :-("

I agree about uploading results to Gedmatch.

Not everyone that you email will respond.

I include the Gedmatch info showing a connection and I list my oldest known relatives and where they lived from each branch of my Family and ask if any of them match the person that I am emailing.

Most of the time the relationship will be too far back in time to be able to establish a connection. That is the problem with autosomal DNA.

The more people that you email, the better chance that you have of making a connection.

I have come into contact with a few 3rd cousins this way and learned a few things by doing it. 

Good luck.