Update: If you’re a 23andMe member, please consider making Relative Finder more useful by visiting www.23andme.com/user/edit/privacy/ and checking the box next to “I want to make my profile publicly visible in Relative Finder and the Ancestry Finder Lab.”

It seems like 23andMe is firing on all cylinders lately. They published some results from the 23andWe research program shortly after knocking out the bulk of the massive amount of DNA day orders in record time (most people I heard from got their results in less than 4 weeks). Of course there were a few outliers taking the full 8 weeks for processing and the unlucky 96 who got the wrong results but for the most part, 23andMe has been working at a furious pace from what I can see.

Following in the fast paced trend, they’ve recently released a new tool in Ancestry Labs called Ancestry Finder (currently in closed beta). I sent them a message asking to be included in the beta and they kindly added me. I spent some time testing out the tool and from what I can see, this is going to go far in increasing the amount of sharing between distant family members. Enough text, time for pictures.

The first thing I saw in Ancestry Finder

When I first opened the Ancestry Finder tool, my initial thought was “meh, this is going to be another of these things not applicable to African Americans.” As you can see in the image above, the information presented just wasn’t compelling…well non-existent really. Unimpressed but undeterred, I clicked to show the Advanced Controls. (Yes, I saw the big blue “how does this work” button but who reads directions?)

Advanced Controls

Advanced Controls revealed some settings that shouldn’t be hidden and shouldn’t be deemed “Advanced”. Why? Because this is where all the magic happens.

To explain the Advanced Controls, I have to back up a little bit and share how the Ancestry Finder works. On 23andMe there is a feature called Relative Finder (RF). RF basically compares your DNA to other members of 23andMe participating in RF and if a significant chunk of your DNA is identical, they can determine (to some degree) your relatedness. There is also a voluntary survey on 23andMe called “Where Are You From” that  asks you to detail your families ancestral origins to the best of your ability. Here is where Ancestry Finder comes in. If one of your Relative Finder matches has completed the “Where Are You From” survey, their answers are presented to you in a graphical format on Ancestry Finder.

Back to the Advanced Controls, there are 3 controls that can adjust what results you can view. I’ll go through each and kind of explain what they do.

Results from toggling the "Include matches primarily from US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa" checkbox

The first thing anyone using this thing should do is check the box to Include matches primarily from US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. To be honest, I am not sure why 23andMe includes the option to hide those results. However, the option is there and the default is unchecked, which has the potential to hide a large portion of your matches.

Results from changing the "Number of grandparents from the same country" option to 1+

The second highly important option is the “Number of grandparents from the same country” dropdown. This allows you to choose which results are displayed based on how many of your matches grandparents are from the same country. The default is 4 so that if one of your RF matches has grandparents who are all from say, Ireland, that match will show up. Again, this default highly limits the amount of data that shows up for a reason I can’t yet discern. To see all the matches, I chose the 1+ option. This allows me to see all my matches responses to the Where Are You From survey, even in the case of people who don’t know where their grandparents are from.

Results from moving the "Minimum Segment Size" Slider down to 5cm.

Finally, there is a slider in the middle that changes how small a segment can be for it to be shown. I adjusted mine all the way down to 5cm from the default 10cm. Unlike the other two options, I can understand the default setting for this option. At 5cm, the RF match is probably in the Distant Cousin range and knowing where their grandparents originate probably can’t provide much insight into recent ancestral origins.

Those are the Advanced Controls. Again, I can’t figure out why those would be called “Advanced” as adjusting them is the only way to see anything of interest in the tool.

Hovering over individual segments.

One of the coolest things about Ancestry Finder is what happens when you hover over one of the colored segments. On hover, a small box pops up explaining each portion of the segment. In the example image to the left, I captured a couple results of what happened when I hovered over a segment. You can see the breakdowns for each color (in the top segment, Navy for Canada, Purple for Iceland, and Lime for the UK) as well as the Segment Length for each result.

I think Ancestry Finder is huge. Game changing huge. Paired with Relative Finder, its going to make 23andMe one of the most useful tools for Genealogy researchers. Of course, there are some tweaks I’d like to see. Like I mentioned above, the Advanced Controls definitely shouldn’t be hidden and some of the default settings should be changed. I would also like to see those “Your relative’s…” pop ups become clickable with the link going to the RF match’s profile.

I am interested to see if Ancestry Finder encourages more people to use Relative Finder. Right now, my RF response rate (matches that respond to initial contact) is about 33% and based on messages posted in the 23andMe community, that is fairly high. If other 23andMe members are anything like me, they’re going to want to see what all 23 chromosomes look like filled up with Ancestry Finder data. That, of course, requires increased interaction in Relative Finder so there is a good possibility RF usage will increase. In any case, Ancestry Finder is definitely a very useful addition to 23andMe’s tool belt. I look forward to seeing how the community responds once it comes out of beta.

Update: Looks like they took Ancestry Finder out of Beta today and now it is available for use by all 23andMe members. Nice!

My employer is an investor in 23andMe however, the views reflected in this post are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.