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I received an add about ancestry.com DNA tests. It piqued my interest. Before spending any money, I figured I would ask if anyone has done this, or used other services? If so, were you pleased with the outcome? Was another service better than this? How much does one spend on average -- are there add on tests? I'm mostly interested in my European roots. Is the DNA broken down by maternal or paternal lineage?
There are probably other things I am forgetting to ask.
Your insight and advice are much appreciated,.
i got tested by ancestry, and i thought it was a waste of money, they did not tell me anything, it was totally worthless, now i believe in dna testing. it just ancestry wasn't up to par. i ended up with family tree dna
I have tested with Ancestry.com, FamilyTree FTDNA both Family Finder and Mitochondrial MtDNA tests and 23andme. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. If you are looking for European connections Ancestry only tests North Americans many of which have European roots. Many do not have Family trees or they are private, and you have to pay a monthly/yearly subscription. It has been somewhat helpful. FtDNA and 23andme do not require a subscription and have good message boards. FtDna has many different tests you can do with one sample, which they keep for 25 years but you pay for each test. I have a lot of International matches on both tests. You can compare Chromosomes which you can also do on 23andme. 23and me has suspended their Health reports right now due to FDA issues. You can still upload your raw data to a third party for health results. The Ancestry matches are International and you can compare chromosomes. The forum community is the best on this site and the price is $99 with no subscription fee. If you are a male you will receive your Y Haplogroup and mt Haplgroup and females get mt Haplogroup. My opinion is that 23and me is the best bang for your buck.
I got my 23andMe results recently and I am still overwhelmed by the amount of information. It's really interesting but I can't quite figure it all out. I'm not getting any matches with other people but lots of requests to share information. Then when I look at it all I have are 4th and 5th cousins, nobody close. It was only $99 and their results of where my ancestry came from originally seems accurate. I hope they can get back into business full time and not be stopped by the FDA. I am female so I got a total result, not divided into either paternal or maternal. I can't tell which is which. But at least it INCLUDES the male portion.
I have Ancestry DNA which I also paid to import into Family Tree DNA's autosomal tools. I also have Family Trees Y DNA test.
As far as autosomal test (this is what most of the DNA tests mean when comparing to AncestryDNA, FTDNA, 23andme) they have there benefits (I can't speak about 23andme). There are two things you'll be getting out of each of these:
1) Ethnicity estimates via "Admixture" tools. Basically they compare your DNA against a bunch of others from different regions and then guess what your ancestry is made of (roughly in the last 500 years).
2) Matches against others that are most likely cousins and various tools to help with that
As far as 1... AncestryDNA is far (hugely) superior to FTDNA. Originaly Ancestry DNA was about equally as bad... it would make pretty broad guesses about your DNA ethnic origins, many people coming up far too high Scandinavian. FTDNA is similar, many Americans with strong European ancestry will come up (some times 100%) "Orcadian", due to them being one of the closest matches to being "English" + Western European + maybe a bit extra Scandinavian.
AncestryDNA has updated their estimates and it is *hugely* improved. So far it seems pretty accurate to me and though we'll see over time how accurate it truly is Ancestry has published some blogs about testing more African tribes than many have done before. In the second version of Ancestry DNA I've found it very useful and it matches what I've founded in my documented ancestry pretty close (as close as randomly inherited DNA can be).
FTDNA's ethnicity estimate is extremely crude, hopefully they'll update it as well. Honestly it's nearly useless, a lot like AncestryDNA's first version.
Either way you go you should definitely take your data from either site and upload to gedmatch.com and use their ethnicity tools and compare against it's varied data sets to get a good guess.
2 on the other hand is where FTDNA shines. It simply contains more matching tools than AncestryDNA... specifically the ability to overlay matching chrosome painting on multiple matches. This helps you identify a part of your DNA that most likely comes from an ancestral line.
With that said AncestryDNA is immensely useful if you build out your tree and considering how many people have built out their trees. This means matches are usually more useful since you can find common surnames and often get a much larger family tree data set.
One more thing to remember is you can import your AncestryDNA test over to Family Tree DNA for $50 right now ($70 is the normal price), thats a bit cheaper than doing both tests on their own, but you *can't* import your FTDNA data over to Ancestry.
I'd recommend leveraging both. If you have an Ancestry tree already then you definitely wan it's matching tools. Right now FTDNA is offering their autosomal test for $99 with a $100 gift card. If you plan on doing a Y DNA or mtDNA test on FTDNA then I'd do that and put the $100 towards those tests... then I'd go ahead and do the Ancestry DNA test as well. This will save you the most money in the long run, if you plan on doing all the tests. Otherwise I'd recommend going Ancestry DNA and spending the money to import over to FTDNA if you find you want its tools.
Again purely on AncestryDNA vs FTDNA, I haven't used 23andme, though I hear their ethnicity matching is more accurate (at least vs the first version of AncestryDNA, not sure now). In the end you can import them all for free to gedmatch.com and get even more info.
Thank you for your input. I'm relatively new where DNA genealogy is concerned and am curious to try it. My father's surname is unusual for someone who is Irish going back to the 1600's (which is as far as I've reached to date), so I was curious to see if there was some way to get a handle on that. Would this mean I would have to get a specimen from him as well as me? My concern is that if there is some trace Spanish in his ancestry, that I wouldn't be able to tell because there is Spanish on my mom's side.
Thank you for your input. I'm relatively new where DNA genealogy is concerned and am curious to try it. My father's surname is unusual for someone who is Irish going back to the 1600's (which is as far as I've reached to date), so I was curious to see if there was some way to get a handle on that. Would this mean I would have to get a specimen from him as well as me? My concern is that if there is some trace Spanish in his ancestry, that I wouldn't be able to tell because there is Spanish on my mom's side.
Opinions or thoughts?
Doing Y DNA testing on your dad can help you find relatives related to him through his father and up the line of fathers - his surname line. If you do autosomal testing, you can find ancestors for both sides of the family. If you test yourself and your father, you will be able to see which bits of DNA come from him and, by exclusion, the remaining bits which came from your mother. Testing siblings and cousins gives even more info.
I've ordered tests from Ancestry DNA to start. Curious to see what comes of them and knowing me, I'll probably follow up with 23andme once the first tests come back.
My brother (and thus I) just got his test results from Ancestry.com - no big surprise on the majority of our DNA (European Jewish), but there were a few other little surprises! Hopefully you get what you're looking for in yours.
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