What can you say about auDNA matching at MyHeritage?

Question

Here is a blog about MyHeritage's auDNA matching feature:

http://blog.myheritage.com/2016/09/dna-matching-now-live/

Have you tried it?  What do think?

Answer 1

It has been EXTREMELY useless so far. WHAT is going on with that site? It has no explanation for anything, and I am wondering if the paid people actually get more out of the DNA matching? There is no comparison anything, no family connector, nothing.

I get this: So and so is a match! They live in the US! you share 2 chromes! Tegether, you share 3%DNA! You are probably 4th cousins 8x removed! View so and so's tree!

So what chromes do we share? How? WHERE? Where in the US do you live? They don't HAVE a tree! I can't contact without PAYING!!! I can respond though, thank god.

I have a very nice man who is what they are calling a 3rd cousin match 2x removed, or something, doing his match theories based on ethnicity. I don't recognize any names in his tree, and when it comes to ethnicity, I was happy to inform him that we are both white. That certainly narrows it down.  Yes, we both have English, Irish, German, and all the other euro genes. It will take me about a million and 2 years to upload my tree  members one by one to that site to maybe never make any connection. I tried offering the GEDmatch site as an option for him, but I am not sure he understands? I wish GEDmatch had a way to view a match's tree real quick, but my final answer about myheritage? Unless you are an extreme die hard who knows everyone in your tree like the back of your hand, this will benefit nobody.

Answer 2

I am with my heritage. This gives a type of DNA matching of where your relatives are located as in country.

Answer 3

In essence Peter, at this stage, not a lot (with regard to what do you think?)

http://dnasurnames.blogspot.com/2016/09/myheritage-dna-discoveries.html

is my experience.

Kitty Cooper has also blogged about her results.

As I've tested on all 3 companies I'm extremely doubtful about the apparent strengths of the matches they are showing me as I can only recognise a couple of names in the top 30/40 and when I checked more thoroughly accessing my rather extensive set of downloads for ANYONE matching any of them, I could find some in other peoples' match lists but not in mine, so 20/30cM matches were non existent for me from the other companies. All three surely cannot be wrong, four if you count GEDMatch.
Apart from now having logged a query as to why I'm noticing this, I've also suggested they offer somewhere for you to note your  comments about the match (for yourself to see), a chromosome browser, an ability to download the list in a usable format, and ability to filter what you want to see in the list, eg matches > 10cM etc.

Comments

One of my 2nd to 4th cousin "matches" from MyHeritage emailed me a couple of days ago.  We found that we were both on Gedmatch, so. we exchanged kit numbers.  I had to lower the minimum cM's to 3 in order to see any type of relationship, which was 3.2 and 3.4 cM's.  If we ARE related at all, it will be in the range of 8 to 10 generations ago.

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I'll add to my "not a lot" comment above by pointing people to this recent blog of mine where a predicted 2-3rd cousin match from THREE other companies/analyses does NOT show up as a match at all at MyHeritage

http://dnasurnames.blogspot.co.nz/2017/08/another-myheritage-mystery.html

If one of the party hadn't tested at both Ancestry and FTDNA, and both hadn't uploaded to GEDmatch, we'd probably never have realised.

Not that we've found the connection yet, but any close match is gold for someone searching for a mystery (as is the chap I'm helping).

Answer 4

My experience is that it is not very good at this point, possibly not even worth looking at in its present state.  In particular, seems to be flagging matches as close that are really in the noise and not real matches.

Comments

OK, I was not expecting much from the DNA testing.  However its been extremely interesting.  I tested through FTDNA, both Mito and Chromo, I have uploaded on both GEDMatch and Mitomatch.  My opinion is Mito, which cost three times what the Chrmo did, has been useless.  However I found several matches from the Chromo (Familyfinder) and I like the Chromosome browser on the FTDNA site. With it I am actually determining which of my Chromosomes are from which ancestor.   Check out my home page to see how you can actually use the DNS test to confirm

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The less expensive mtDNAPlus test is usually enough for matching (and confirming) on direct maternal lines in WikiTree.

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Hello Linda,  It is necessary to use triangulation to confirm ancestral lines beyond 3rd cousins.  Sincerely,

Answer 5

I uploaded my Ancestry Autosomal DNA results to My Heritage when it was a free upload and prior to matching - I waited for months before they introduced the matches about a year ago, and personally it has been a waste of time...I don't even bother to look at it now.

I compared a couple of my known matches that were also on Ancestry and/or GedMatch and My Heritage had over estimated the amount of shared cM by about ten times, so matches appear much closer than they really are.

I thought that they would fine tune their algorithm with time and improve the matches but I don't think they have done that yet.