New MyHeritage DNA Filtering System - Thu, 28 Jun 2018

Today, MyHeritage announced a new feature – a brand new filtering system for DNA matches. They describe it here on the MyHeritage Blog. They say they are rolling out the feature gradually, so you may not see it yet.

I can see the new features and I thought I’d give it a run-through.

They now show me having 1 close family (my uncle), 148 extended family (I don’t know how I’m related to any of them) which go up to what they say are 2nd to 5th cousins with a minimum of 53.3 cM, and then 5,711 distant relatives which are said to be at 3rd to 5th cousins and further (and I again don’t know how I’m related to any of them). The first listed distant cousin shares 77.7 cM. The 5,711th shares only 1 segment that is 12 cM.

They give me locations where my DNA matches live:

Other than Israel in 3rd spot, all the other countries you see above are listed in almost the same order as the picture shown on MyHeritage’s blog post. That seems to indicate to me that it may more be the distribution of MyHeritage’s test takers, and my matches follow that (with the Israel thrown in). I have to go way down the list to get to Ukraine 5 and Romania 1 which is where my ancestors actually come from.

My ethnicities are the same as previously. Ashkenazi 83.8%, North Africa 5.8%, South Europe (Iberia) 4.5%, East Europe 3.8%, Middle East 1.1% and Eskimo/Inuit 1.0% – yes, I’ve still got that Inuit in me it appears. It’s cold in Winnipeg in the winter, brrr.  I only consider the Ashkenazi and East Europe correct as I should be close to 100% Ashkenazi. 23andMe has me at 99.2% and Ancestry DNA’s latest update put me at 98%.

But what’s new is they give the ethnicities of my matches, with my ethnicity percentages to the left for comparison:

Why I have 671 matches with North and West European people and 735 matches with Irish, Scottish and Welsh people is beyond me. But I only have 5,860 matches in total and that matches shown there total way more than that, so some of my matches must count as more than one ethnicity. The 5,476 Ashkenazi out of my 5,860 does give 93.4% and that’s not too bad.

So what’s their new filtering system? Well, it is based on these charts. You can click on any item, and it will take you to a page where it will show you only the people who corresponding to the item. So you can click on the first chart to get either your close family, extended family, or distant relatives. You can click on a line in the second chart to get your matches who live in a certain country. And you can click on a line in the third chart to get your matches who have a certain ethnicity.

I’ve got 5.8% North African ethnicity according to MyHeritage. If you go way down the ethnicity match list, you’ll get to the 10 people with North African Ethnicity that I match to. I click on that and bring up the list and see that they would all be classified as distant relatives as the closest is only said to be a 3rd to 5th cousin. When I review the 2nd of the 10 matches, it is a person with a Jewish name living in Netherlands, and all his ancestral surnames are Jewish, so I wonder how he became a North African. When I compare myself with him, I can see the ethnicities and I see this:

Well, MyHeritage says he’s got 13.1% North African ethnicity, so I guess that’s enough for him to be a North African match to me. He is a match for me for Ashkenazi and for Yemenite Jewish, but not for Middle Eastern which is 6.1%. So MyHeritage must have used something like 10% as the minimum ethnicity a match must have to be considered an ethnic match. 

And what about my 1% Eskimo/Inuit?  Nope. Nobody that matches me has at least 10% Eskimo/Inuit in them.

MyHeritage has also added these 3 filters (relationships, locations, ethnicities) to their DNA Matches page.

In my case, these 3 filters don’t help me much, but they may do better for you.

The filter on their DNA Matches page that is potentially the most useful to me is their “Has shared surname” filter which is under the “All tree details” dropdown:

Using this filter cuts down my list to just 46 matches. I manually checked all of them and cannot find a surname/place connection.

The “Has Smart Matches” filter could be useful for me one day. I do have my DNA and my uncle’s DNA connected to my tree at MyHeritage, but it has not found any DNA SmartMatches for me yet.

A filter that MyHeritage does not have but would be appreciated would be an ancestral birthplace filter, matching the towns my ancestors were born in with the towns the ancestors of my matches were born in. Surnames were only adopted by the Jewish people in Eastern Europe in the early 1800’s so connecting with 5th cousins or more by surname is usually not possible for us. But connecting by birth town, when our DNA has a match, might have more promise.

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Followup: June 29.  Only a few hours after I published my post, I received a very nice unexpected email from Gilad Japhet, Founder & CEO of MyHeritage, with his comments along with some clarifications and explanations for me.

He explained that my speculation that the countries of my matches reflect the distribution of MyHeritage DNA test takers is incorrect. He said that about half of MyHeritage’s test takers are living in European countries. It is more likely that the example on their blog post was of a Jewish person which is why my countries almost match theirs. And he is correct in saying that I have few matches from Ukraine and Romania because very few Jews still live there, with most of the descendants now being in the USA, Israel, etc., like me in Canada.

Gilad pointed out that my speculation that 10% is used as a minimum ethnicity match and that people will be listed under multiple ethnicities is stated right in the MyHeritage blog post. Whoops. In the future I’ll try to read announcements more carefully so that there would be no need for me to speculate (bad on me!)

He did admit that my 1% Inuit might be a false positive.

Thank you Gilad for those clarifications. Please continue to innovate. Everybody benefits.