Ancestry DNA....so many "matches" so few trees.

[dreva]

I agree with you. Frustrating, isn't it?  I'm trying to trace my mother's ancestors.  She was adopted in New York City in 1925 and according to my Ancestry DNA, I'm 36% Irish, which was a big surprise. So I'm guessing the birth mother or father or both, were Irish.  All the Ancestry DNA matches I have show lots of Irish ancestry and only two of them have trees.  It would be great if there were more people taking the DNA test and then feel inspired to complete their tree.

[Pheno]

I think some of this is down to Ancestry's policy of making you open an account when dna testing is done with them.  I think quite a few people take a dna test to help others out - have seen several respones about asking cousins etc to take a test to help out someone struggling with their origins.  However, these people who are helping haven't necessarily got an interest in genealogy and possibly don't have any detail on their ancestors.

Hence lots of test results, which then produce matches, from people who aren't really interested in their ancestry which is absolutely fine.  Its just that if you get a match with them people seem to be expecting them to have such an interest because they have taken a test.

Pheno

[brigidmac]

Devra don't forget that Irish can indicate Welsh or Scottish too

[sbunter]

Don't worry about what you don't have, you should have plenty of 4th cousins with trees that you can work on. I spend all day most days checking and working my matches trees, and my own tree to find common ancestors. Look at shared matches, shared surnames, shared places. Pick the best ones and start researching. Sometimes you find the common ancestor, sometimes you have 4 weeks of work and still confused The fun is in the chase
PS AND always upload to GEDmatch

[Jill Eaton]

I had an email from an ancestry DNA match today. I get so exited ( I really must get out more) when I receive one of these. I haven't had very many so far
The lady does indeed share ancestors in common

Mindful of the various comments on here, and not wishing to be a hypocrite, I responded as soon as I got home from work.

I feel very virtuous now

[Penholder]

So glad I read this thread!   I was feeling really frustrated at the number of matches where there is either no tree, linked or otherwise, names are just 'Private', there are question marks for dates and no place names are entered.   

Having read the instructions I am now in the process of downloading my raw DNA so that I can check with matches elsewhere.

On the plus side I have made contact with two distant cousins who have been very friendly and helpful.

Another success has been to sort out which of two cousins with the same name and born only one year apart in the late 1600s is mine.   I'd suspected the one who turned out to be right all along because of names given to children and grandchildren but now I can see a match with my man's younger brother.   A real pity that match and another one haven't bothered to reply...

A big thank you to all those out there who have taken the trouble to make their trees available and Happy New Year to everyone!

[tresario]

If you want to find other matches you can upload your raw DNA from ancestry to gedmatch.com, gedmatch genesis,DNA land,my heritage,and ftdna, all for free.

There are differences in the relationships though due to some sites adding up every centimorgan in common, and the likes of ancestry only add up over 6 cms. Ancestry is the most accurate apparently. 

[Yonks Ago]

Not sure if any of you have done the following!

You can click on their name.sometimes a tree will come up at the bottom..also when you click on their name click on the ? mark..will show you how much DNA you match.
You can also do a search matches..top right hand side and that will show you who else you match with along with that DNA person.

Yonks

[Pheno]

On which site can you do this Yonks Ago?

Pheno