Comparing ancestry results from the different companies

[Devilfish86]

Hey everyone

This is my first post here. I recently got into geneology and discovering my ancestors. I can't believe what I have been missing out on all these years. It is so interesting. Anyways, nice to meet you all.

My maternal side is from Sicily (maternal haplogroup is k1a) and my paternal side is from UK (haplogroup I-M253).

I just made the rounds on my ancestry testing. I used AncestryDNA, 23andMe, DNA Land and some of the tools on GEDMATCH.com (mainly Eurogenes k12).

The results are all generally similar, but there were a couple surprises, namely:
- Iberian showing up around 2-5% in each test (no known Iberian ancestor - could this be coming up because I have Sicilian ancestry?).
- Ashkenazi Jew showing up at 1% in AncestryDNA and 4.9% on DnaLand (again, is this coming up because I have Sicilian ancestry?). 0% on 23andMe, 3% on Eurogenes
- A huge chunk of Europe West (29%) w/ AncestryDNA and only 3.5% w/ 23andMe
- Eastern Europe (3%) w/AncestryDNA, and 7.7% with DnaLand but 0% on 23andMe

Here are the full results:

DNA LAND
Northwest European 26%
South/Central European 19%
Mediterranean Islander 19%
Balkan 14%
Ashkenazi 4.9%
North Slavic (Eastern Europe) 7.7%
Southwest (Iberian) 5.5%
Sardinian 1.6%
Central Indoeuropean 1.2%
Central Asia 1.1%

23andme
Italian 35.5%
British/Irish 17.6%
Broadly Northwest Europe 17.6%
Broadly Southern Europ 11.8%
Iberian 6.3%
French/German 3.5%
Broadly European 3.5%
Balkan 1.1%
Middle East 2.7%
Sub Saharan Africa 0.4%

Ancestry
Europe South 50%
Europe West 29%
Great Britain 9%
Europe East 3%
Iberian 2%
Scandanavia 1%
Euro Jew 1%
Caucausus 1%
Ireland 1%
Asia South 1%
Middle East 1%
Africa South 1%

Eurogenes
North Atlantic 29.96%
West Med 18.40%
Baltic 17%
East Med 16.14%
West Asian 11.96%
Red Sea 3.46%
Northeast Africa 1%

Haplogroups:
Maternal - K1a
Paternal - I-M253

My questions to you all:
1. How do I interpret these results?
2. Which site do you all believe to be the most accurate for DNA Ancestry test and why?
3. What do you make of the surprises I mentioned above? Why do some sites pick up Ashkenazi and others don't?
4. What could explain the Iberian (no known spanish ancestry, all UK and Sicily)?

Looking forward to being a steady contributer to the site going forward! Glad to have met like minded people.

Brendan

[Saetro]

Welcome Brendan

We are all finding our way.
Even those who have been on the path for some time.
This includes the companies who make ethnicity predictions.
All of them have their strengths and weaknesses, and someone else will comment on your specific questions on your interests.
In general, all of them use reference populations who are alive today.
You may be interested in where your ancestors were:
a century ago
in 1800
in 1500
in 1000 and so on.
But what they are telling you is based on current populations.
And many people report that small percentages - 2% and below in particular - produce some strange predictions.

AncestryDNA also uses their database of customers to inform their responses.
For me their analysis was not good at all, and that included the time slice predictions, which were for me so generic as to be worthless.
Others have had much better results.

For the UK, I have heard good reports for LivingDNA.
Which uses a very detailed database, and links to specific areas of Britain.

Other companies have the problem of being able to tell Viking from AngloSaxon (very very hard), or in the terms they use, Scandinavian from German.
And some Celts look a bit Iberian.

I happen to know where all of my grandparents' grandparents came from.
Assigning a locality to each (6.25% each) and adding gives a very accurate picture of where my people were around 1800.
Far better than any DNA-based prediction.
But I also know from some DNA matches, that some of my people moved large distances in the previous 200 years - but still within the country zones used by test lab ethnicity predictions, so they would not come up anyway!

As reference populations improve, the predictions will also improve.
A couple of years ago I had a prediction at 30% that was flat out wrong.
Now my worst is at 18% at one test lab, and 6% at another.
It's getting better all the time.

Surname research is often way more accurate, especially for names coming from a particular region.
Of course you need to understand that over the past century or so, some people moved to find work - in Italy mainly to the north.
So that is what the outliers will be.
http://gens.labo.net/en/cognomi/ works well.
I often use Formula 1 driver "Ricciardo" as an example for Sicily.

For the UK, try http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Surnames.aspx

DNA ethnicity is great fun.
But when I just need to find out where my people came from, surname research still wins hands down for me.