Commerical DNA testing VS Family tree

[sktibo]

I've done quite a lot of DNA testing at this point, so I figured it was time to make a comparison post of my paper trail ancestry and the commercial DNA tests that I've taken.

Here's a small chart of my family's ancestral birth locations. Paternal line is on top and maternal line is on the bottom.

17279
Line 34's ancestors were from Kilmuir, Easter Ross, the Orkney Islands, and Indigenous Plains peoples.
Line 35's ancestors were French Canadian, and Indigenous Plains peoples.
Line 40's ancestors both appear to be from Ayrshire.
Line 42 has a parent from Dunning, Perthshire. The other parental birth location is Stirlingshire, likely Bannockburn area.
Line 43 has a parent from Braco, Perthshire. The other parental birth location is unconfirmed, it could be either Stirling or Perthshire.
Line 45's parents were apparently from Lincolnshire, but regularly moved back and fourth to and from Cardiff area. They and their ancestors moved around an unusual amount.
Line 48 is mixed Colonial American.
Line 49's parents both came from Roxburghshire, Scottish Borders.
Line 50's ancestors may not have been from Lincolnshire. One parent was born in Devonshire.
Lines 52 and 53 are listed as being born in Ireland, with no other information given. One of them is listed as ethnically "Scotch" in a census, while being listed as "Irish" in another.

ANCESTRYDNA:
Great Britain: 73
Ireland: 6
Iberian Peninsula: 6
Europe East: 4
Scandinavia: 3
Europe West: 2
Finland/NW Russia: 2
Italy/Greece: <1
Native American: 2
Polynesia: <1

23ANDME:
British & Irish: 52.7
French & German: 9
Broadly NW European: 27.6
Eastern European: 4
Southern European: 0.5 - Iberian: 0.2
Ashkenazi Jewish: 0.2
Broadly European: 3.9
East Asian and Native American: 1.9 - Native American: 1.3

FTDNA:
Western and Central Europe: 73
British Isles: 24
North and Central America: 2
Siberia: <1

GENO 2.0 NEXT GEN:
Western and Central Europe: 58
British Isles: 34
Finland and Siberia: 2
Eastern Europe: 2

LIVING DNA (complete mode):
Northumbria: 42.1
Aberdeenshire: 11.5
Scandinavia: 7.2
Devon: 5.6
South England: 5.2
South Central England: 4.4
Northwest Caucus: 3.1
South Wales: 2.8
Cumbria: 2.4
East Anglia: 2.2
Southeast England: 2.1
Orkney: 1.9
Mesoamerica: 1.7
Cornwall: 1.5
Kurdish: 1.4
Baltics: 1.3
Iberian Peninsula: 1.2
Finland and Western Russia: 1.2
West Balkans: 1.1

This was written June of 2017, and the DNA results probably will change. I'll try keep this post updated when new results are released.
Ranking these tests in terms of how close they get to my family ancestry records:
1. 23andme
2. AncestryDNA
3. Living DNA
4. Geno 2.0
5. FTDNA

2 and 3 were very close, basically a tie between Ancestry and Living DNA, however, ancestry gave me a little less British Isles and some Western Europe, which is slightly closer to my known ancestry.

Currently, I recommend 23andme for accuracy no matter who you are. If you want something a little different, try Living DNA or Ancestry, and if you have a lot of British Isles ancestry, Living DNA is the clear choice. If have a family tree on Ancestry, I recommend Ancestry so you can use their relative matching system and link your DNA test to your tree. I don't recommend Geno 2.0 or FTDNA unless you're a DNA addict like myself. Maybe I was a little bit too into Pokemon as a kid, because now I feel that I have to "catch" all of the DNA tests available.

[Tomenable]

How accurate is GEDmatch for you, especially K36 Oracles and other tools?

[sktibo]

How accurate is GEDmatch for you, especially K36 Oracles and other tools?

LucaszM's K36 (You did work on that too, correct?) is fantastic. I'm actually planning on adding it into this review but I'm waiting on being able to download my new NG raw data from FTDNA, which at the moment I get an error when I try to do so. With my 23andme and Ancestry kits it is very accurate. Tolan's map tool is good too, but it is less so than the others... However before I pass full judgement on that I need to run my new data through it.

[firemonkey]

My known ancestry to 3 gt is 100% British isles.

Based on that.

1. Living dna 100%-GB and Ireland
2. My heritage 84.2%- English ,Scottish,Irish and Welsh combined
3. FTDNA 74%-British isles
4. 23andMe 65%- British and Irish
5. Ancestry 53%- Ireland and Great Britain combined

[Mixed]

23&me has a habit of not processing all the dna. And the Balkan category is a waste. It should be part of Eastern European.

[Amerijoe]

Following the lead here is my British ancestry per testing company.

1. Living dna 94.3%- GB and Ireland
2. My heritage 96.5%- English ,Scottish,Irish and Welsh combined
3. FTDNA 98%- British isles
4. 23andMe 90.8%- British and Irish
5. Ancestry 96%- Ireland and Great Britain combined
6. Natgeno 97%- Great Britain and Ireland

Combined average for B&I 95.6%. Looks to be real.:)

[Mike_G]

I'm still learning about my lineage, but 23andme's numbers and ratios make sense. The others are too heavily biased to one side of Europe or the other. FTDNA's 2.0 wasn't the joke for me that others' results reflected, but I can't take it seriously at this point.

As much as 23andme's 19% "Broadly Northwestern European" both underwhelmed and frustrated me for several months, the more I learn about my maternal grandfather's side, the more I tend to agree with that result. Throw a dart at the countries bordering the North Sea, and I've probably got some of it (less Norway...I do get a lot of distant Swedish matches on FTDNA however). Combine that with 28% B&I and that covers my maternal side pretty well.

[Tomenable]

23&me has a habit of not processing all the dna. And the Balkan category is a waste. It should be part of Eastern European.

I wonder why do they count Finnish as part of West European (at least it seems so). On DNA.Land, "Finnish" is to some extent interchangeable with "North Slavic". Generally it should be grouped with (other) East European admixtures.

[sktibo]

I want to mention the K36 Oracle, despite the fact that it is not a commercial DNA test. It changes quite frequently as it seems to be constantly being tweaked and improved upon. I think it is absolutely fantastic, here's my latest regional and area sharing on "Normal" mode, of which the Area Sharing percentages get closer to my paper trail than any of the commercial tests do:

Regional Sharing %
1 British Isles 63.53
2 France North&Belgium 20.19
3 SW German Swiss & Tyrol 9.64
4 Holland & N. German 4.39
5 France Central&South 2.25

Area Sharing %
1 British Isles 58.65
2 Western Europe 30.65
3 North Europe 5.34
4 East-Central Europe 3.27
5 Balkan 2.08

[A Norfolk L-M20]

Thank you for sharing this information Sktibo. I missed the earlier post. Thank you for all of your work and sharing.

[sktibo]

Thank you for sharing this information Sktibo. I missed the earlier post. Thank you for all of your work and sharing.

Hey, you're more than welcome! I hope the stuff I post is useful to someone out there. As you are well aware these autosomal tests can vary quite greatly and I'm hoping that my results display that variance so that somebody new to autosomal DNA testing won't be too thrown off when they see strange results from a single test.

[A Norfolk L-M20]

As indeed the 23andme test is for me. I couldn't particularly recommend it as it stands out as the least accurate of my tests

[sktibo]

As indeed the 23andme test is for me. I couldn't particularly recommend it as it stands out as the least accurate of my tests

It's really strange isn't it, 23andme is more or less the only accurate test in my case, and yet it is the furthest off for yourself. I can't help but wonder how a full autosomal sequencing + GEDmatch and LucaszM's K36 oracle would do. Perhaps that would be the only truly good option across the board at this time? I really don't have much faith in the small amounts these commercial companies test and I certainly don't have faith in imputation