DNA Relatives (American, find, database, Asians)

[Forrest82]

Hi,

I was wondering how many DNA Relatives you all have on 23andMe. I have around 920. I'm Jewish, btw.

[suzy_q2010]

I think the max they put in your relative list is about 1000. DH has 917; I have 967.

[twnxn]

I have 347 DNA Relatives (6 2nd/3rd cousins; 28 4th cousins and 313 distant cousins) on 23andMe, thus far. However, I am Taiwanese-American. The database on Asians are much smaller than those of European background.

[PA2UK]

I have 927.

Originally Posted by suzy_q2010

I think the max they put in your relative list is about 1000. DH has 917; I have 967.

Yes, it should be noted that 23andMe do not give you a complete match list - granted, all the companies have a cut off point where they don't include matches that have less than X amount of shared DNA because it's unlikely they are identical by descent. But the cut off point is the same for everyone regardless of how many matches they have. 23andMe have some crazy system where each person has their own individual cut off point based on how many people they match in order to keep the list under 1000, which means legit IBD matches may get cut off your list. You may be able to find them with the Countries of Ancestry tool but not all of them.

So lets say you match 950 at 8+cM and another 100 at 7-8cM. Since the 100 that match at 7-8cM exceeds 1000 total, all those under 8cM will be cut off your list in order to keep it under 1000. They can't include some people who match at 7cM but not others. However, someone else might have 900 matches at 6+cM, and another 300 at about 5cM, so their cut off will be anything less than 6cM, while yours was less than 8cM. The different cut offs for different people also mean that you can be on someone's match list even they don't appear on yours - and vice versa.

Additionally, they only let you share genomes (which will allow you to get use out of the chromosomal browser) with 250 people at a time. They also have no "in common with" or "shared matches" feature like FTDNA and Ancestry.com do (how can they, when person A can appear on person B's list but not vice versa?). While I do think 23andMe have the most accurate ethnicity results, they make it very difficult to get any use out of the matches.