23andMe declares Bankruptcy

[Biggles50]

Biggles, I am looking forward to part two of your recent comment. The way I see it Ancestry prey on naive people who don't really know what they are buying. Most people, when I am looking at my matches, seem to think that they are going to be told every ancestor they ever had and where they were all born. That's why you see so many people that have themselves and just their parents in their tree. Their website, judging by the numerous comments of complaint here, is frequently in disrepair.  The price for a test seems exorbitant, even though they are cheaper than a few years ago.

In balance, I'm thoroughly impressed with myHeritage. I first came into contact with them seven or eight years ago when they were doing a pro bono offer, helping people identify adoptions and mysteries in their life. They gave me and tens of thousands of other people, free tests. Their range of statistics is far superior to Ancestry, their support is friendly and courteous and prompt, which you certainly can't say about Ancestry.

A couple of years ago, when I became really enthusiastic, I did pay for an Ancestry test, and was very disappointed that there was no chromosome browser, and no detailed segment data. And now they have the cheek to actually start charging for a little bit more information. I certainly won't be renewing at the end of the month.  I would even be very reluctant to pay for any further ancestry tests in light of my earlier comments. I think this is why they are doing this one month free offer. They are getting desperate.

Zaph

Yes, Ancestry has faults.  It looks that a vast number of the DNA kits are bought as a Present, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day etc as a few weeks later for each event we get an influx of new DNA matches.  These only post a basic tree, if an tree at all and once they see their Ethnicity they vanish.

People can have expectations vastly greater than their knowledge of Genealogy.  Ancestry like all the other DNA companies are in it to make profit, hence the influx of Traits, Pro Tools etc. so they all are tarred with the same brush.

My Heritage has by far the worst Ethnicity predictions, hardly surprising as they are second division when compared to the resources available in Ancestry.

My Heritage “Lost” my Wife’s DNA, we tested with Ancestry, then tested with My Heritage.  All was OK for a few months, I had the massive total of three new DNA matches who had not tested with Ancestry but are now in my Family Tree, my Wife has ZERO DNA matches in her Family Tree from My Heritage.  Then all of a sudden my Wife’s DNA disappeared from My Heritage, we had not deleted it 100% sure of that, My Heritage would not reload it from their records, if we wanted we could buy another DNA test kit.

So yes My Heritage customer care SUCKS.

I’ll give you 30,000,000 reasons why Ancestry is the BEST DNA test to take, that is the size of their DNA database, plus you can upload your raw DNA data to ftDNA, MYHeritage, Gedmatch etc to get the best of all worlds, access to as many DNA tests as practical.

Yes, Ancestry is way behind in analytical aspects of using DNA but the Chromosome Browser in My Heritage has not proved itself to be useful for either my Wife’s test nor my own.

Spreading DNA between the available resources is the best way of accessing as large a database as possible, warts and all.

[aghadowey]

It does all depend on your experience, doesn't it?
My husband's DNA matches on My Heritage have been fantastic- confirmed things we expected, made new links with previously unknown branches, etc. I have also found (with the three kits I manage) that people there are most likely to respond to messages.
Ancestry certainly has a large database of members and many of them are close matches of mine but rarely do they respond even when I know them and offer to send family information. Regarding the maternal relatives that have tested on Ancestry only TWO so far of about 100 are remotely interested in family history. One first cousin (whose mother is deceased) did ask our aunt to test but neither she, her brother or nieces are interested in any family details and I never really got an answer when I asked why they even did a DNA test 

[4b2]

MyHeritage is better for continental Europe. In my limited expedience Ancestry has close to no coverage for Germany and Scandinavia. Almost all matches for such lineages will likely be from immigrants, mainly to the US.

The main benefit of Ancestry is the database size - https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_testing_comparison_chart

Ancestry at 27m and MyHeritage at 9m.

With Ancestry's skew to tests in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, it means people with heritage US and British ancestry will get far many more matches on Ancestry. You will find even higher number of matches if you have Jewish ancestry and Mormon ancestry or relatives. As those people take so many tests.

Then there is the situation with Ancestry's timber system, which strips out what they believe are false positives. The rate of false positives on MyHeritage is around 70-80%. So the majority of your matches are not reasonably close relatives, but people who share a common region of ancestry. This seriously hampers finding real DNA relatives, as if you find common ancestry in a cluster of matches on MyHeritage, you have a high chance they are not actually closer DNA relatives. I'd say the false positives on Ancestry >= 30cM are 0%. Below that it's difficult to tell, but it's much less than MyHeritage.

So if you have US, British ancestry you will be able to find multiples more matches, in the range of 40X-50X, with a high degree of confidence. MyHeritage is useful for closer matches, mostly above 100cm. Below after around that level you get false positives.

The MyHeritage cM values are also less helpful, because they don't strip out identical by state (false positive) segments. Below 100cM matches, you need to multiply the cM by 0.6 to get a closer idea of the identical by descent shared cM. So for a typical US or British tester, by the time you've got through your 1st page of DNA matches, you are probably down to people who are 4th-5th cousins. By the time you are through to page 7-10, you are dealing with people with whom you share about 15cM, which might be identical by descent, but is more likely to not be. And 15cM is a very ambiguous amount, as it's at the threshold where it's not not uncommon for 15cM to be inherited (nearly) unbroken over multiple generations. Around 15cM is the average size of segments inherited from either parent.

In terms of Ancestry:

>= 30cm - you will likely be able to find a relationship if there is no NPE, a tree and no brick walls, relationships usually quite predictable
20-29cM - these sizes can be much more ambiguous in terms of relationship, owing to the possibility of smaller segments being inherited (mostly) unbroken
13-19cM - progressively more ambiguous
8-12cM - the range where segments could potentially push outside of the reasonably feasible to research window of ancestry

While you probably only have 10-20 >= 30cM identical by descent on MyHeritage, on Ancestry you'll have more like 200.

With Ancestry, you will typically get several to about 50 matches in a cluster, even for 4th-5th cousins. With multiple people related in the main window that is not so difficult to research (1775-). You look through their trees to find common surnames, places and ultimate ancestors. Heritage just doesn't have enough matches to be able to do that very consistently. Since many matches will have no tree, NPE, or dead ends that aren't easy/possible to solve.

If I go through my Ancestry matches down to about 20cM, if you exclude the ones that have no tree or not enough of on to reasonably find out their ancestry, I know how about 75% are related to me, or I have them in files where common ancestors have been found among the matches. (I have three NPE lines and a suspected adoption, which most of those relate to). Yet if I go through the MyHeritage matches down to Ancestry-comparable 20cM, I don't know how I am related to 90% of them. For the vast majority of them I don't even known what side (paternal, maternal) I am related to them on, never mind the actual line of ancestry. While with Ancestry, for 20cM+ matches, I know which line of ancestry they relate to in most cases. Owing to Ancestry having many more matches.

With Ancestry DNA I've been able to break down 7-8 brick walls, prove most of my lines back to between about 1650-1775, identified a likely adoption, have solid leads and some known ancestors for three NPEs, and expect to be able to solve more lines into the future. Also solved the paternity of a friend's paternal grandfather (who it turns out was my grandfather's half 3rd cousin) and united a few unknown half-siblings. Comparing to MyHeritage, I've just got matches who have provided no clues to break down brick walls, and an unknown ~2nd cousin match where I don't even known if they are a paternal or maternal match.

That's why Ancestry wins hands down, and the competition are not close. Despite their bleeding of their loyal customers and having developed their system very little.

The best process for getting the most out of genealogy DNA is:

1) test with Ancestry
2) upload that test to MyHeritage + FTDNA for free
3) test with 23AndMe (not sure what will happen with that)
4) systematically go through the matches to find common ancestors among them

[4b2]

My Heritage has by far the worst Ethnicity predictions, hardly surprising as they are second division when compared to the resources available in Ancestry.

Concur with this. I can't view the results now, but my father and his sister have completely different results. My aunt is mostly Celtic and my father is mostly English. Other tests have some inconceivable results. With Ancestry sibling tests tend to be a few percent different, as you'd expect with the bounds of random inheritance.

I only have one test of about 30 where there appears there might be something that it really wrong.

Although it should be taken with a pinch of salt, it's particularly useful if you have ancestry that can't reasonably be traced or if you want to find out if a family fable of an unusual descent was true.

Of course, most people are unaware of the science and caveats and like to post of their 1% native America etc.

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

With Ancestry's skew to tests in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, it means people with heritage US and British ancestry will get far many more matches on Ancestry. You will find even higher number of matches if you have Jewish ancestry and Mormon ancestry or relatives. As those people take so many tests.

I have between 18,500 and 19,000 on both but the difference in quality really shows. Both my parents  and at least one grandparent are NPE's so I'm always going to be limited to half aunts/uncles and h1c as my closest matches yet I only have 5 matches above 50cM on MH, 4 of them are Ancestry uploads so in reality only one is a new match and is a mystery 276cM, they fit  cluster of over 50 who tested with Ancestry but are almost twice the cM of any one else in that Ancestry cluster.

[Biggles50]

The figures tell their own tale.

142 DNA matches linked in to my Family Tree thanks to Ancestry.

3 DNA matches linked in to my Family Tree thanks to My Heritage.

Even though I first found one of these three on ftDNA, so in reality only 2 DNA matches in my Family Tree via My Heritage.

[4b2]

I've got -

Matches with confirmed ancestry:

430 from Ancestry
12 from MyHeritage
7 from 23AndMe
3 from FTDNA

Matches with common ancestors, but unconfirmed link to self:

450 from Ancestry
21 from MyHeritage

So also < 4% from MyHeritage.