New Tool From MyHeritage (Well New To Me)

I’m pretty sure you all know that I have BSO (Bright Shiny Object Syndrome) so you’ll understand when I say that I was working on a blog and came across this tool and decided I’ll write about this and leave the other blogs for next week. I came across this tool that was launched on August 22, 2017, from MyHeritage. It’s called The DNA Match Review Page. They’ve had a matching page before but here you can dig a bit deeper into each of your matches and perhaps gain a bit more insight as to how you match.  You can read more about it HERE.

When I saw this new tool I was excited to see what it might tell me about my matches. I can’t lie I was a bit disappointed with the matching so far because it would show your matches but you really didn’t have a clue as to how you connected unless you already knew. But the new tool helps you where it can.

So when you first look at the matches it gives you the person’s name, an approx age (if they’ve entered it), what county they are located in. Another improvement since last I noticed is that it gives you not just a  % of DNA you share but also the number of centimorgans (cM). I like cM because I can relate better to them than percentages. It also shows the number of segments and what the largest segment is in cM. You can view their tree if they have one attached or you can just review the match.

After clicking review match you then see again how much DNA you share and the longest segment. The next thing you see is if there is anyone else that you and your DNA match have in common. In this example, my dad has an in common with (ICW) match. This feature is great because it’s interactive and you can click the match that you have in common and see more information about that person.

In this case, it shows that my dad and his cousin each have about the same amount of cM’s connecting to their ICW match. The next thing we see is each of their ethnicity.  This can sometimes offer information if you have a similar ethnicity (or don’t share) that can identify which side of the family might be the connection. In this case, there is nothing significant. But if each of them had a unique origin that might offer a clue.

With some matches, you actually get a list of surnames (with locations) that you may have in common or if you have no surnames in common, sometimes there is a list of the names in their tree.  Also with some matches, you get a view of their tree. I’m not sure why it sometimes shows the tree or gives the surnames and sometimes it doesn’t. It might have to do with security settings but I was looking at myself in relation to my father and no names came up and neither did a tree and yet my tree is public. Although my tree was available at match screen.

But the interesting thing about this is it gives you more information and every little bit helps. Especially if you have a brickwall in your tree. There is some criticism of the DNA matching at MyHeritage but I see that it seems to be improving and they continue to be very active making their site better and better. So I can only see great things ahead. I was a bit disappointed that my mom’s second cousin didn’t show up as my mom’s second cousin on MyHeritage despite the fact that she does on Family Tree DNA and on Gedmatch. I’m not sure why that would be and I will give them that feedback.

So if you haven’t either tested with MyHeritage or transferred your raw DNA data to them for FREE you may want to consider it. Yes, you can transfer your raw data for FREE from Family Tree DNA  or Ancestry.com, Ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.ca , 23andMe.com  or 23andMe.ca. As I always say; I’m looking for cousins. I hope you are too.