Ancestry Clusters

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

The blog post Millmoor kindly shared is filled with the usual marketing hype and keywords to catch the inexperienced, less knowledgeable and dare I say the lazy. It's all made out to be an essential 'powerful' and 'easy' method at the click of a mouse.  The clincher for me is the new “bulk add” feature, I'd hate to waste time adding them one by one', where do I sign?.

Let's just debunk one of the claims right out the gate;
What Is a Cluster?
Each group, or “cluster,” represents people who likely share the same common ancestor with you. Instead of looking at hundreds of individual DNA matches, you now have organised groups of matches. This makes it easier for you to figure out which side of your family any individual match belongs to.

But unassigned matches won't be included in cluster reports and my match list already shows which parent if I bother to look.

[Biggles50]

In Ancestry I have 28 DNA Cousins who share 65cM or more with me.

Of those 28 there are 3 that are not in my family tree as they are not showing up in searches, all have no family tree and 2 are female so I have no idea if the surnames are their married names or birth names, of the 2 neither seems resident in the UK and the shared matches do give the likely Grandparent line to which each belongs.  The 1 male shares my Irish lineage but both he and his half Brother may have been the subject to the Irish Adoptions that used to take place when the child was born in a “home for unmarried mothers”.

They are already in my Colour Coded Groups.

So as it stands Ancestry Clusters are likely to be of little use.

In fact you do not need to wait for the roll out simply follow The Leeds Method for the similar clustering results, do remember that this method also has a cM range to which it is applicable.

[4b2]

Ancestry's continuing one-size-fits-all approach scores another own goal. If as implied by the screens the cluster is calculated on selection then it would have been no harder to add adjustable parameters as it is to have fixed ones.

As mentioned in a previous post. The genealogy companies are an a bad financial state, since government-imposed COVID restrictions + the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed people into having little to no disposable income. This has pressured discretionary spending. As a result, both FindMyPast + Ancestry turned on their marketing affiliates. They basically burned down any growth to instead basically nuke their programs and just take ~100% of all income.

Take a look at Ancestry's profit over recent years:

2012: -$1.9 million
2015: $2.8 million
2016: $12.4 million
2022: -$82.1 million
2023: -$125.6 million

They are scrambling to try and patch this by squeezing us, their most loyal customers, and not even providing anything much in return. And as mentioned, nuking their affiliates, which probably only netted $1m tops.

I'd take a wild guess that Protools is bringing in around $12m a year, and has virtually no overhead.

Genealogy needs the money printer an ~0% interest rates.

[Petros]

I have 25 matches above 50 cm. All bar two I can place despite several stemming from illegitimacy. I have my suspicions about how one of the other 2 is related to me but unfortunately my relevant 2nd cousins have their DNA on other sites!

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

  They've foolishly released it to me so I  had to try it. I name this feature 'Domestos' as it clears 99.9% of matches.

[TonyV]

Ancestry Matches by Cluster arrived on my computer today.

I have over 19,000 Ancestry matches, all bar 4 are clearly identified as Paternal or Maternal. 26 of my Paternal matches range between 65 and 292cM (the highest) but only 3 of my Maternal matches are within the defined clustering range. The clustering tool only captures 22 Paternal matches and some of those omitted are higher than the lowest of the ones included.

Ancestry gives me no option to cluster the Maternal matches (and the "ALL' button doesn't work either) and maybe that's because there are only 3 of them, but while it is curious, it doesn't really bother me because it is my Paternal side that I am researching. 

The Paternal clusters don't add anything to what I already knew, so I am probably long past that stage in my search. Interestingly at least one of the Paternal matches (130cM) omitted from the clusters is an important match because it doesn't seem to belong to the other 4 clusters which ultimately all link up, as you might expect. This omitted Paternal match does share cM with one of the other omitted matches but not with the other two omitted matches. Maybe Ancestry doesn't regard 2 as a cluster?



 

[David Nicoll]

Hi,

   Like others, clustering has just landed, and like others I am truly underwhelmed. Two clusters of three which should actually be a cluster of six, all second cousins so all already known.
   The upside seems to be that you can now apparently have more than 64 groups, cluster groups seem to be counted differently, so I now have 65 groups!

[Biggles50]

 Clustering has landed.

My Wife’s results, Sorry you don’t have enough matches yet.

Mine - a cluster of six, all of whom are known and in the Family Tree.

A managed test - 3 clusters, Mothers, Paternal Grandmother’s, four 1C or 2C’s who have tested.

My Nephew - via his Mothers side, his First Cousin Ian tested and is in one cluster yet Ian’s Brother Michael has a Daughter who has had her DNA tested and she is in a different cluster when she should share about 400cM with Ian.

[Essnell]

Hi Everyone,

I just looked at my Ancestry account and I have the clustering feature.  I have 6 clusters.  The top two are quite large and the last has 16 connections of which 4 are on the diagonal which is where one looks. The others are side matches. 

But below the chart is a list which was quite unexpected and shows which side the diagonal matches come from   Maternal and Paternal. And it's accurate for me.    Very similar to what I have on My Heritage only that has more clusters as the cM cut off is lower. 

There are also numerous dull green/grey squares which do properly cluster as the cM range is still limited but they are at least there. 
Looks like it will be useful as time goes by for at least some people.

Essnell.