Ancestry is Catching up!

Question

Don't get me wrong, I love the results from Ancestry. My particular families have not been tested a lot, so my 'closest' possible matches were  fourth to sixth cousins when I started. Since then, I've talked to two different cousins and we've figured out our MRCA. One of those I collaborate with regularly to enhance our lines.

The first is my first cousin, once removed. Whom Ancestry has now decided is the closest to me - a second cousin (he was listed as fourth-sixth). The other they list as 4th-6th cousin, he is my 2nd cousin, 1x removed. I admit, I don't know a lot about DNA testing, but it is nice to see the 'known' cousins moving up on my list.

Comments

or they just changed the algorithm to make more customers happy ;-) 

Dont trust someone with a business model and a secret algorithm.....

Answer 1

I see that Ancestry updated their DNA matching algorithm in May 2016, and they have an article announcing that update posted here:

https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2016/05/03/the-science-behind-a-more-precise-dna-matching-algorithm/

I don't see any recent announcements about further Ancestr DNA matching algorithm updates in 2017, but I suppose they might have changed something and not made an announcement.
In any case, it seems likely Ancestry will in the future continue to change and update their algorithms, so we'll likely see more of these kinds of changes to who we're genetically closest to. And hopefully each of these changes will more closely match what we know in real life to be true!

Comments

Thank you Cynthia