Yes, I've been spending a little more time on my thousands of AncestryDNA matches lately even though many, the majority of them by some accounts, will turn out to be false positives.
Yes, I do sometimes wonder if the money spent (and hoops you have to jump through to get a test when you live outwith USA) has been worth the effort you have to expend to see if the leafy hints to genealogy may be new genetic, as well as papertrail, relatives that will get me through my brick walls.
Yes, I've found some new papertrail relations, but conventional research could have got me there eventually without the DNA test.
I've recently reminded myself of Shannon Christmas' useful blogpost on getting the most out of your Ancestry results.
To all of my Ancestry DNA matches who may search as far as here on my sites, I particularly draw your attention to this wonderful comic (linked to on Shannon's blog) which explains better than I, on why I keep suggesting that you upload your raw data from Ancestry to GEDMatch.
There's a whole world out there that doesn't necessarily believe we should trust what we are told by Ancestry without the evidence to back it up.
Let's use the great tools available to us and work together to break down those brick walls.
Do also use their newly introduced Share results feature.
It is a step on the way to more useful tools in that it allows you to see whether one of your matches, also matches someone you are sharing with - NOT that you know you all share the same common ancestor without exploring further at the chromosome comparison level.
Here's Angie Bush's blogpost about sharing your results on Kitty Cooper's blog
and an explanation of Triangulation - which is not the same as In Common With - from Roberta Estes blog
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