Wednesday, January 15, 2014

GEDMATCH

I often ask DNA cousins on 23andMe, FTDNA and AncestryDNA to upload their raw data to Gedmatch.com

Gedmatch.com is FREE.

Some of the benefits of doing this are:

- Ability to compare different people to each other from the different companies (ie 23andMe to FTDNA or 23andMe to AncestryDNA)

- Ability to triangulate matches.  

- Ability to compare with matches for segments in common smaller than 5 cM.  It is debatable if this is much use genealogically, but sometimes you want to see if a segment was just under the 5cM threshold.

How to upload your 23andMe data to GEDMATCH:

First download your raw data.  To do this you go to "Account" in the top right of any 23andme page.  Then select "Browse Raw Data".  Then in the top right will be an option to "download raw data".

You will have to enter your password and your secret question answer.  Then you will have a file,  named something like "genome_your_name_full_date"

Then on the homepage of Gedmatch.com, login.  In the top right you should see the following box:




Click the 23andMe link and follow the instructions.  Record the # given to you, usually an M and some numbers.  Consider putting this # on your 23andMe profile.

You can upload a GEDCOM as well.  

For uploading DNA data from Ancestry.com or FTDNA it is basically the same.  Download your raw data, and then upload it by clicking the appropriate link at Gedmatch.com


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