When you want to check what kind of relationship a shared cM value could represent, the best answer is always on DNA Painter’s Shared cM Tool. Getting there from Ancestry means opening a new tab, loading the tool, and typing the cM value in by hand.
Ancestry shows the total shared cM and the number of segments for every match, but the two figures that matter most when you are judging how close a match really is, the unweighted shared DNA and the longest segment, are hidden inside the Shared DNA pop-up, one match at a time. Nothing on Ancestry tells you the average size of the segments you share.
Ancestry only puts the pagination controls at the bottom of your DNA match list, so every time you want to move to the next page you have to scroll all the way down. On a list with thousands of matches that is a lot of scrolling.
Ancestry only puts the pagination controls at the bottom of a shared matches page, so every time you want to move to the next page you have to scroll all the way down. On long lists, that scroll happens dozens of times a session.
On Ancestry’s Origins (Ethnicity) page, each macro region (Northwestern Europe, Eastern Europe, West Africa, and so on) lists its sub-regions with a percentage next to each one, but the macro region itself does not show a total. To find out what percentage of your overall ethnicity is “Northwestern Europe” you have to add them up by hand.
Ancestry’s regions by parent & grandparent chart lists your regions in the same order in every column, from the largest share of your own DNA down. To find what a parent or grandparent passed down to you most, you have to read their whole column. Sort Regions by Parent & Grandparent sorts the chart by any column.
Ancestry’s match list shows 25 matches per page by default, which doubles the number of pages you have to click through and halves the efficiency of every other Genealogy Assistant feature that works on the list. Always Display 50 Matches in List raises the page size to 50 so you are always looking at twice as many matches at once.
On a shared matches page, Ancestry shows 25 shared matches per page by default, which doubles the number of pages you have to click through and halves the efficiency of every other feature that works on the list. Always Display 50 Shared Matches raises the page size to 50 so you are always looking at twice as many shared matches at once.
