How ACCURATE is Ancestry's Parent 1 / Parent 2 DNA Match Separator?

Ancestry released a tool that separates your DNA matches into parent 1 or parent 2 (or paternal and maternal). But is the Match Separator accurate?

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CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction
00:55 Quick Overview of Ancestry Match Separator
04:28 Updates to DNA Match List
06:56 Analyzing the Accuracy of the Ancestry Match Separator
09:41 Analyze Match Assignments of Siblings
13:00 Analyzing Unassigned Matches
16:24 Analyzing Matches to Both Parents
19:08 How Accurate is the tool?
19:47 Errors in the Ancestry Match Separator
24:29 Review of the Accuracy of the Ancestry Match Separator

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✅ Let's connect:

#FamilyHistoryFanatics #geneticgenealogy #AncestryDNA

[jjbud]

My parents had such similar ethnicity results that I really had a hard time figuring out which side was which, but once I did correctly assign parentage, the Match Separator confirmed many, many matches that I was uncertain of (so many people do not have trees), so it was a big help to me. Even though checking a match manually to see if it matched others usually works pretty well, the Separator saves a lot of time. I found it to be accurate when compared to my known relatives.

[alvree]

This feature was a great help to me. Since I don’t have DNA tests for my parents, it helped me confirm the maternal & paternal side, based on the side it placed known cousins that had taken the DNA test.

[dawngable]

Thanks for this. FYI, I just found a match that Ancestry has labeled as Paternal, but then Ancestry's Thrulines for that same match shows the Common Ancestor being on the Maternal side. It's a distant match (only 9 cM-1 segment), but still it shows that two of their tools are not communicating, or that DNA matching is overriding thrulines when there is a discrepancy. I'm surprised this match is not labeled as unassigned. I see you had a similar situation.

[mjdmusic]

A very interesting talk on Ancestry Parental Matches, thanks Andy.
A prediction for a person who's DNA I manage, leaves much to be desired! - Born in Guyana, his paternal line beyond his father is unknown. He has a number of DNA 1st-3rd cousins who are obviously related to him paternally, (347-67 cm) and allare equally puzzled by their same ancestral connection. They are all shown as 'Unassigned' .
Therefore, I believe that rather than using DNA, Ancestry may rely upon tree entries of others to decide Parent 1/Parent 2.
However, those cousins are all identified as having very high African ethnicity, which is not applicable to the maternal line, yet all shown as 'Unassigned'.
It is very strange that such a marked difference in ethnicity seems to have no bearing on the parental prediction by Ancestry!

[janel.]

I discovered that some of my cousins, both paternal and maternal sides, have taken Ancestry DNA test. It was fun to see them listed on the correct sides.

[WendyMoule]

Combining DNA cousin matches from other websites using clustering and DNA painter tools. These tools are frustratingly not available on ancestry. I had worked out the four major lines for my parents. Ancestry placed all four lines on my mother's side and nothing on my father's side! I am not impressed.

[alanheadrick]

Gold! Thanks for this video!
I see a note for the 164 unassigned "Update in Progress". Since my other post one more person was added to Parent2.
Now on the same page its showing the ethnic breakdown so I figured I should look into that. Parent1 is 1% Southern Japanese, Parent2 is 6% Southern Japanese. So I looked at the matches for Parent 1 and 2. I found them to be mixed. I suspect the mothers side is where the 6% Southern Japanese is from, but this must be wrong??? I sent messages to the matches asking questions and only received one replied. I think at this point I need to wait for more updates.

[jennifer]

In my case, or at least, my dad's case (Polish side), I'm not sure if this tool is really useful. My dad has ~5, 600 matches, 331 of which are on his maternal side (all 5th to 8th cousins, save for 1 4th-6th cousin), and only 46 paternal matches (all 5th-8th cousins). He has maybe 10-15 maternal 1st and 2nd cousins that have tested on Ancestry, and they all show up as unassigned. He has less than 5 paternal 1st and 2nd cousins, which show up on paternal. None of the surnames in the trees are familiar. To quote a post I saw on the reddit, "I think my grandfather came from an egg!".

My mom (German and Italian) gets roughly 4, 300 total (half and half on each side). 2, 844 on the German (maternal) and only 667 on the Paternal (Italian), with 739 unassigned. Only 1 surname on the Italian side is my great-grandmother's. At least my mom's side is assigning the 1st-4th cousins.

Common communities are irrelevant on both sides, as the vast majority of my ancestors came to the US between 1906 and 1914, with one or two around 1880. For example, not really sure "Early Pennsylvania Settlers" is accurate when my maternal great-grandparents immigrated in 1914. Seems to be picking up the 5th-8th cousins.

[karenfitzpatrick]

Thank you for this video. I was so confused by the "both sides." I have only one "2nd cousin" listed so far in that category.
I don't know this person. They haven't been active for years and I haven't yet figured out where our branches join. It's a very small tree with about four generations.
Almost all the maybe twenty people are private with no dates. Only one person is identified by name and I don't have anyone with the sir name in my tree. Not even close.
It has to be on my father's side. He carried a lot of secrets and he and all his siblings have long past away.
My father has seven KNOWN children with four women. One who was adopted out at birth. I thank God for Ancestry for bringing her into my life just a few years ago! I'm curious about this unknown "both sides" relative.

[juliew]

New follower here! What a surprise to see Devon and Cornwall come up on the screen, I live in Cornwall lol.
The parental lines have been very accurate for me I just wish it would show me what side I am on for the other person! I have resorted to messaging some people to ask and it has been super helpful.

[debbieroot]

Catching the replay. Very interesting.

[karenbrickey]

In this feature 2 of my 3 kids and I are listed as my mother's paternal matches only which I believe to be genetically impossible. My youngest son is listed as both sides which is correct. My husband has also tested and he is not one of my mother's matches on any of the DNA sites so there is no endogamy. Many of her maternal first cousins are listed as both and many paternal matches are listed as maternal even though I have tested several of these on Gedmatch and they do not match any of the paternal matches. So for now I am just ignoring the maternal & paternal match feature until they fix it.

[juliemiller]

Why can't we have chromosome matching on Ancestry???? I would be happy to pay more for the option to use it.

[alanheadrick]

YES! Thank you! I posted a question on the Ancestry forum asking if anyone thought it was accurate. I received 5 or 6 replies it was accurate. What I see is confusing, there is only one 3rd cousin match which we believe is on the fathers side and they are not selected. She has 4 matches on Parent1 and 10 matches on Parent2, the best match is 12cM. It also seems to indicate one parent is European, when they are both Japanese.

[zigm]

For me, this tool was actually fairly accurate. My maternal side has 42k matches, my paternal side has 21k matches, and I only have 2.3k unassigned and 1 match on both sides. Everyone I’ve looked at specifically is on the correct side. The irony is that I know from research that one sibling of one of my paternal ancestors took a sharp turn when entering the US, went to the Deep South, and their descendants ended up marrying into many families related to my mother. So I actually have quite a few people who should show as related on both sides and don’t. 😂

[antoniorangel]

Thank you for sharing your experiences with this new tool. My experience is that it is still experimental. My four grandparents are very different, but then their families were endogamous. So, for me, it is very easy to make family clusters. I have come across clusters were 95% are one parent but 2 or 3 matches allocated to the other parent. My guess was that they may be related both sides, or wrong. I have also had matches with a common ancestor where everyone were paternal but one match was labelled as "maternal". When Ancestry asked for feedback, I let them know about this case of all matches from my grandfather with a common ancestor, except one "maternal match" from the same ancestor. Not sure how this match could be related to my grandmom, but I conceded that such match could be at least both sides. My suggestion is to check in your common ancestors matches, and you may see an "odd" one related to the other parent.

[drewred]

For the matches which are assigned, I find it very accurate based on shared DNA matches, but like you I was perplexed about how some matches which are labelled as ‘unassigned’ when it appears obvious from the match lists which side they should be assigned too. It would be really interesting to know what kind of algorithm Ancestry are using. I don’t understand their reluctance to release a chromosome browser; it would definitely help me to solve the mystery of my great grandmother’s heritage, which is proving tricky to fully piece together, even with many DNA matches from her side of the family.
Does your mother have family from Australia Andy? ‘Victoria, European and British settlers’ is one of my communities as well but I am Victorian so no surprise in my case, haha.

[monikahurford]

My mother and I and my son have tested on Ancestry. I have only 23 Maternal matches, 180 Paternal matches, and 4, 919 Unassigned. This is not helpful. My parents were born in Germany, so this is possibly a result of not many Germans testing with Ancestry. What confuses me is that there are Unassigned matches that I have in my tree as maternal cousins.

[ginagaladriel]

I don't know if you will mention this later on... but do you think that it says Both, because for one the siblings it said parent 1, and the other two said parent 2 (at least that's what I think I saw before you changed parent 1/2 to colors), so they might be saying oh.... there is parent 1 and parent 2, so must be from both sides, even though in this case parent 1 and parent 2 are the same person?

[MsBaddg]

My 6 kits are equivalent to yours for accuracy. You mentioned the benefit of a chromosome browser here.... I don't quite understand why Ancestry resist doing this. They clearly have the data as they are using it to match and for side view, so why not let us see it? I'd be happy to pay a small fee (like MH or FTDNA) to get access to advanced matching