Notice: Ancestry.com’s Update Will Remove Some DNA Matches

Earlier this week, Ancestry.com announced on a conference call that they were making several big changes in regards to DNA matches. I was not on that call, but I read about the changes on Debbie Kennett’s Cruwys news website. And, last night I saw an announcement on my own Ancestry account.

These changes will be taking place starting “in the beginning of August,” so you don’t have much time to save matches…if you want to save any!

The Changes

According to the updates, the new changes will affect the following:

More Accurate Number of Shared Segments

This is an update with Ancestry.com’s algorithm and, while you’ll still see the same total amount of shared DNA between you and your matches, you might see the number of segments decrease. This will apparently be more accurate.

See the Length of Your Longest Shared Segment

As another result of the updated algorithm, you will now be able to see “the length of your longest shared segment” between you and your matches.

Distant DNA Matches must be 8 cm or higher

This last change is one that has many people concerned. Ancestry is basically removing our matches who share less than 8 cM of DNA with us. Since the numbers they use are rounded, you will actually lose a lot of your matches who appear to share 8 cM of DNA with you. (For example, if you share 7.7 cM with a match, that would show up as 8…but it is actually less than 8 cM, so it should disappear.)

While many of these low cM matches are “false” matches, many of these matches are also real matches. And, we hate to lose them.

(NOTE: Since these low matches have now been purged from AncestryDNA, I have deleted the remainder of this post explaining how to save your matches.)