Question:

My test results have been finalized and I’ve joined this project. Now what do I do?

This can be answered in two parts: 

1) Working with your own test and matches, and 

2) Comparing your test to others in our project.

Working with your own test and matches:

·       Check your settings (name a beneficiary for your test, grant the access you prefer for kit management, law enforcement, or project permissions, update contact info);

·       Email your most promising matches, introducing yourself and offering to compare notes;

·       Enter your match list and added notes into a spreadsheet saved to your hard drive;

·       As always, continue verifying and building your own FTDNA tree, linking known matches as you go to help behind the scenes with ‘bucketing' (you will need to add their line of descent to your tree to do this) It's fine if your tree is bare-bones, listing names and places and the birth, marriage, and death facts you have been able to document. At the very least, a tree of your direct-line patrilineal ancestors is key to helping others connect their genealogy with yours! (Note: our FTDNA trees will likely be migrated to My Heritage during 2024)

To find your most promising matches, note the level of both your test and your match's test. If you have a Y111 test, examine your Y111 matches first, noting which level each match has tested at. Then drop down to your Y67 matches, your Y37s, and so on. Some of our legacy tests only checked 12 or 25 markers, so to be thorough, check these matches, too. Your best matches likely will be those men who match you at your highest level of testing, but never ignore matches who have tested fewer STRs but who have great trees or are willing to collaborate. 

Working with project comparisons: 

Our shared/public results pages were designed to allow project members to compare STR markers. This was relatively easy to do when only 12- or 25-marker tests were being compared, but it gets harder as we compare 67, 111, or more. But it is worth the effort when we see the ‘bigger picture’ – the larger family grouping that our test falls into based on STRs (using the project spreadsheet) or SNPs (using the Discover tools).

It can also help to search using ‘Advanced Matches’ found near the bottom of your home page. You can search within any project you are a member of for several kinds of matches: Y12 through Y111 or Family Finder.

It’s a good idea to quickly check to see if you’ve lucked out and have Y matches in the project who also match you on Family Finder – hopefully on your patrilineal line!

Thoughts on analyzing our Y-DNA results...