It’s the Little Things that Count MyHeritage Keeps Improving

MyHeritage has recently added several improvements to MyHeritage DNA above and beyond those I wrote about in Stepping Up the DNA Game. They’ve gone from an afterthought in my genetic genealogy work to an “I’ll have to check them out” and now to “I am really liking this site.”

Navigation

Working through a long list of matches can be time consuming and challenging, especially if you can’t easily pick up where you left off. MyHeritage has added two new features that users have requested to help.

Page Navigation

The first is to add page navigation so that you can jump to a specific page (see right). This means if you leave off reviewing your matches at page 125, you can quickly jump back to that page when you come back to the site.¹ It also shows you just how many pages of results you have. You don’t have to guess.

Results Per Page

The second allows you to choose how many results you want to see on each page. Don’t have a fast connection or maybe limited screen space and don’t want a long list to scroll through, set it to the minimum (10). Want to see more, bump it up all the way up (50). You choose.

Distant Cousin Labeling

They’ve also changed how distant matches—those with relatively little shared DNA—are labelled. Initially, they were labelled “3rd cousin to 5th cousin.” While some of these matches may have fit into this category, not all did. They may have been more distantly related or even false matches.

Now, those matches with low shared DNA with Medium or Low confidence are now labelled “3rd cousin to distant cousin.” This will help you to better identify how closely you are related to your matches.

Triangulation

I talked about MyHeritage’s triangulation in my previous posts—Stepping Up the DNA Game and Triangulation Hiccups. MyHeritage added a new method of identifying which matches triangulate with each other.

Now when you view a match, if a shared match is triangulated—all three of you match in the same DNA location—a triangulation symbol (see right) will appear in the shared match’s row.

Clicking on the symbol will take you to the Chromosome Browser where you can see exactly how the three of you match. Now you don’t have to go to the Chromosome Browser, search for the specific people, and add them to the browser to determine if you, your cousin and a shared match all triangulate or not. MyHeritage has done that work for you.

In my opinion, this is a big improvement on Ancestry’s shared matches. Triangulation allows you to determine that you share a common ancestor. Without it a shared match could match your cousin on a different line that doesn’t match you and you wouldn’t know it.

Kudos to MyHeritage for listening to their users and building a DNA tool that we can not only use to take our genealogy to the next level, but better meets our user experience requirements as well.

• Category: Commentary
• Tag: DNA, MyHeritage