Ancestry DNA testing - which one?

[egontoste]

I've been looking online and there seem to be several different companies offering tests and we're not sure which one to go for.
Does anybody know which one is likely to be the best and narrows it down the most?

If anyone can help, I'd be grateful, thanks.

I think I’ve done pretty much all of them, ancestry.com, 23andme, MyHeritage, familytreedna and a few others. I don’t know how useful the ethnicity estimates are from any of them (because was anyone anywhere ever 100% anything? It puzzles me!) but I was looking for biological family and they’re all great for establishing how you’re related to people. I found my dad!

I think if you’re looking for family and interested in genealogy then ancestry.com is still the best, 23andme started really as a health thing and their ancestry stuff was sort of an afterthought - however they’ve made lots of changes and improvements lately. It depends what you want to know?

Wow, that's amazing that you found your dad, for us it is more of an anthropological interest in ancestral roots way back I think, rather than tracing present-day relatives.

I've done quite a bit of research and already discovered German, Scottish, Irish and English ancestors on my side. I also think there is a distant Portuguese link there (via a particular surname) and that would be good to establish whether its there or not.

On dh's side there is a real mystery as an immediate relative of his has an uncommon (minor) medical condition normally only associated with people from a certain random and unexpected part of the world, so we'd be interested to see if that crops up!

Just to point out that by doing this you're giving your entire genome away for free - in fact you're paying - to a private company, probably an American one where they have horribly lax privacy laws.

www.businessinsider.com/privacy-security-risks-genetic-testing-23andme-ancestry-dna-2019-2?r=US&IR=T

Gauge your own risks.

Gauge your own risks

If my DNA helps to catch a random American serial killer, great. Where do I sign?

I think in that case it would probably be a tie between ancestry.com and 23andme, with MyHeritage in 2nd place. It’s fascinating to see how well the paper trail and the science match up but there’s a lot of variation in how each site codes and attributes the DNA. My results range from 60-90% European, and even though I have an English grandmother two sites say I have no link to the British isles, while others say I’m almost 50% British!

You upload to GEDmatch to help catch serial killers! At least that one is free (once you’ve downloaded your results from ancestry or wherever) 😀

Ive read that theyre unreliable.

I first did Ancestry in 2017 and it was very specific in telling me that I had 10% Finnish, 50% Scandinavian, 25% Scottish/Irish and 15% English DNA.

It has since updated this twice now and the latest estimate says 50% Irish/Scottish and 50% English

Not sure what to make of it as my father’s family are Scandinavian and my mother’s are Scottish.

Prior to the last ‘re-jig’ it just said probably western European 80%.

Rubbish. Ive had some strange Americans contact me as well.

Ancestry and the others run an ever-increasing database of "this DNA means it's from locality/people X" from their own customers, so it changes over time as they get more info, NightsOfCabiria. That's science, innit.

(I work for one of the companies named in the businessinsider link I posted earlier).

As far as I can see, they send you the results and it is then down to you whether you upload them on sites to search for dna matches. We probably wouldn't be doing that.

Otherwise... mmm. So not all that reliable then. That's interesting because what we were thinking of doing was getting 3 of us tested, me, dh and adult dd - it is she who is the most interested. So the mix that crops up in me and dh should be reflected in hers. (She is definitely ours by the way, I was there at conception!).

Has anyone else done tests with both parents and a dc before, and how did it pan out?

I’ve got both parents on ancestry, one on 23andme and two of my three children on each. They both have interesting revelations about the patterns of parental inheritance tbh, 23andme in particular have a whole section on this. They also tell you about maternal haplogroups, the unbroken line passed from mother to child over many thousands of years and of course for men there is the additional paternal haplogroup. Ancestry instead has genetic communities (or migrations) that in our case we all seem to have inherited from our fathers - that might just be coincidence for us or it might be the same for everyone. These come with timelines and lots of interesting historical detail. I love these, I knew nothing about our heritage other than that I had 3 American grandparents and 1 British, so it was profoundly moving for me to learn more about the parts of the planet they migrated from and when and why. I don’t think I will ever tire of researching my ancestry!

I've read that more people from Europe do ancestryDNA (ancestry.com) than the others. So it might be more useful in the long run (finding relationship hits and more precise origins) to do them. I used them because of this then also uploaded to GEDmatch so I can benefit from results from other people using the other companies.

I'm also considering 23andme as well though because of the detailed mother haplogroups information!

I agree with @SpoonBlender. Your DNA is valuable information that will be sold on. You will be giving away any privacy. Why would you do that? Even worse, actually paying for the privilege of giving them such valuable data.

I used ancestry itself.
I'd already done a lot of research online and it pretty much confirmed what I knew. Almost entirely from the uk, specifically north east.

Your DNA is valuable information that will be sold on
Who to and for what purpose?

I e done both AncestryDNA and 23e and have uploaded to the free duvets - GEDmatch, Family Tree DNA and My heritage and have found interesting things on all of them. If I had to choose one though it would be AncestryDNA. I was looking for biological family but working out how I’m related to matches means that I can see where my ancestors came from too.