My husband and I are both genealogy buffs. We’ve been making use of Ancestry.com’s service for years now, enjoying the window to the past that it provides. Fairly recently, though, Ancestry has come out with a new tool, and it’s pretty awesome. AncestryDNA allows you to send a small DNA sample in for analysis. They compare your DNA against a database of “native” DNA from around the world, to determine your ethnic heritage (to about 10 generations) and they are then able to match you against other AncestryDNA members to see who shares your genetic markers. I had the opportunity to try the service, so I can tell you all about it.
Getting Started
Getting started with AncestryDNA is pretty easy. You just go to dna.ancestry.com and order a test kit. I completely forgot to take any pictures until after I had collected my sample, but it’s a pretty simple saliva collection kit. (In other words, you spit in a tube.) This was a lot easier for me to use than other saliva sample vials I’ve used in the past (for medical purposes), because there’s a wider piece attached to the top initially. Just looking at the tube, I thought I needed to collect a lot of saliva to get to the fill line, but it’s not nearly as much as it looks like to start with. There’s an inner piece that ends before the bottom of the tube.
Then you close up the top, which releases some liquid down into the saliva sample. (I assume it’s a preservative.) And you swap that wider, funnel-like top for a regular lid. After registering your kit online, pop the vial in the provided return packaging and put it in the mail.

The instructions are very basic, simple, clear, and easy to read. No need to go flipping through pages of paperwork or anything like that! Just follow the simple step-by-step instructions printed on the collection kit’s packaging.
Activating Your Kit
The final step of the collection process is activating your kit. You have to make sure that Ancestry knows whose DNA it is, and how that connects to your family tree information. So you’ll go to the indicated web address and log into your Ancestry.com account. You’ll enter the kit number, and then fill out some brief information.
One of the things I wondered about was whether it has to be the main account owner who does the DNA test. It does not, as you can see from the screenshot below.
If you want to submit a test for someone else in your household (either instead of or in addition to yourself), you can. It will ask you who in your family tree this DNA should be connected to. See? (I’ve whited out my birthdate, for privacy reasons, but you can see how it shows me the person from my tree and gives me the option to choose someone else if necessary.)
Wait
Then you wait (the only hard part!) Wait for it to get there, and wait for it to be processed. They say up to 6 weeks, but it didn’t take that long for mine. I think it was a week or a week-and-a-half getting there. And it only took 10 days for them to process it. I’m sure that varies depending on how many they have to process at any given time, but it could be fairly quick.
The Results
Then comes the exciting part – an email saying your results are in! I was thrilled to get my email. My husband was not so thrilled – because I found the email at 11:00 p.m. and had to go check it out! (Actually, he was pretty excited for/with me; he just wanted to be able to check it out with me and wanted to go to bed.)
When you click through and log in, the first thing you’ll see is a summary of your estimated ethnic breakdown. (Well, the first thing you’ll see is a little pop-up inviting you to watch a video explaining their process. The video really is very short – just a couple of minutes.) There was nothing particularly unexpected about mine, especially having clicked through and seen where it says some of the groups tend to occur, outside of that which is immediately obvious. Pretty much all were accounted for by the heritage I already knew about. It turns out, I’m pretty much 99+% of European descent. Kinda bummed I didn’t have any fun, unexpected heritage pop up. (Did you know, though, that Caucasus is not European? It’s Middle Eastern. Perhaps I knew that at some level before, but I never really connected that. Interesting!) (You have to click to open up the trace regions; I just opened them before taking my screenshot.) So here’s my breakdown.
You’ll see more information if you click on each individual region name.
Then you can click over and see your matches. I had 100 pages of potential matches! They’re ranked, though. The closer relatives are a higher confidence. I had one match listed as approximately 3rd-4th cousin range. The remainder of that page and most of the next were 4th-6th cousin range. Everything after that was more distant and, therefore, ranked as moderate (50%-ish) or low confidence. The results look like this:
If you click on the little question mark that shows up near the “possible range,” you get a pop-up with a pageful of information like this:
(There’s a lot more to this, with more information about 3rd cousins, and a number of other possibilities in the same range. But this gives you an idea of what to expect.)
Each listing in the results gives you a little bit of an idea about the person’s tree.
There are three options here. A public family tree (tells you how many people are in the tree), a private family tree (tells you how many people are in the tree, and displays a lock), or no family tree (says “no family tree”). It’s worth noting that “no family tree” doesn’t necessarily mean the member doesn’t have a tree! It just means that the DNA has not been linked to a tree. You will still be able to look at their public trees once you click through to their listing.
Which is the next thing you’ll want to do – click on “review match” on one of your matches. At the top-right, you’ll see that person’s ethnic breakdown (not percentages, but non-trace and trace regions – just as a list), assuming they’ve chosen to have this displayed. Then at the bottom of the screen you’ll see their tree, assuming they have one linked. To the left of the tree there’s a list of the surnames in the tree, with any that match your tree listed at the top. Most of this information is interactive.
There’s also a tab where you can click to see which locations are shared between your two trees.
If we go back out to the main screen where your matches are listed, there are some pretty helpful navigation tools. You can choose to see only starred matches. (These are matches you’ve manually starred. I’m using this option for matches I’ve confirmed.) You can choose to see only new matches. And you can choose to see matches with shared hints.
This is pretty awesome! The “shared hints” option will show you your DNA matches who have shared ancestors. I only had two with hints, but one was a “low confidence” match and one was a “very low confidence” match. I might not have gotten to these for a while, otherwise, but was immediately able to confirm that we are relatives. (1st cousins, 6 times removed, for instance)
This is a really amazing tool, and it is going to keep me busy with new leads for a long while – not counting any new leads that are generated as others have their DNA tested! Now hubby wants to do his.
This would make a really unique Christmas present for a family history buff in your life: just order them the kit and wrap that up for them to open. (It could make for some pretty interesting homeschool studies, too!)
[UPDATE 1/2015: Want even more bang for your buck? You can now transfer your AncestryDNA data to Family Tree DNA, opening up the possibility of matching up against that pool of individuals, as well. The transfer itself is free right now, but you’ll have to pay a fee if you want to unlock certain capabilities or view more than the top 20 matches.]
Thank you for this post. I told my husband about a year ago that I wanted this for my birthday present. I knew about it before they finally released it. I’ve been looking forward to it because I am adopted. I can’t wait to find out the results!
Oh, how exciting! It must be an especially helpful tool for those who don’t have a lot of ancestral information from family stories. I hope you find lots of great matches!