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How to set up GEDmatch for genealogical work

Uploading raw DNA takes minutes. The use starts when the kit is visible, signed with a surname and a place, and the project application names one line.

Vitaly Khoruzhko

Have you already tested with AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA or Living DNA?

Do not stop at the company where you tested.

GEDmatch lets you upload raw DNA and compare your kit with people who tested at other companies. You can be on Ancestry, and a possible relative on MyHeritage. Once both files sit on GEDmatch, the kits are compared with each other.

A plain upload is only the first step. Real use starts when the kit is visible to other genealogists, signed with a surname and a place, tied to a tree, and the Ancestor Project application says which line it belongs to. Otherwise you get another long match list and cannot tell which branch of the family it came from.

In short: raw DNA → a properly filled kit → GEDCOM → Ancestor Project → matches → segments → a shared ancestor → documents.

Registration is free. GEDmatch describes itself as a free genealogical DNA database. Paid Tier 1 tools are not required for the upload or for joining a project. They make sense later, once you have a tree and a few matches worth working.

Menus on the site get renamed from time to time, so there is no instruction below of the form “click the pencil on the right”. The steps last longer than the labels: the raw file, processing of up to a day, as much information about the kit as you can give, a visibility mode you chose on purpose, a tree with places, an application that names one line. Visibility modes are checked against the privacy pages and the site rules.

What the series is made of

One article for all of these steps gets too long. The setup is split into five texts. Each can be read on its own, but they pay off in order.

  1. The raw file: where to download it and how to upload it. What to upload, why Excel spoils the file, why one person is one kit, and whose DNA you may upload at all.
  2. Profile, visibility and GEDCOM. How to sign a kit so a stranger can tell whom to look for, which visibility to choose, and how to attach the DNA to the right person in the tree.
  3. Ancestor Projects: how to join and what to write to the administrator. Why a project still helps when the match list runs into the thousands, and which application text an administrator can actually place.
  4. How to choose an Ancestor Project. One kit in several projects: wide Belarus, a historical territory, or a particular district.
  5. Matches, segments, the letter. What to look at after approval, how not to treat a sum of centimorgans as a proven ancestor, and how to write to the person you match.

If you came from a project description and need the short path to an application, there is a separate page: You already have a DNA test. 15 minutes to Ancestor Project Belarus.

The order in which this works

DNA test
    ↓
raw DNA
    ↓
one kit per person
    ↓
visibility for genealogists
    ↓
alias, company, sex, places, surnames
    ↓
GEDCOM of the person who tested
    ↓
Ancestor Project and one specific line
    ↓
One-to-Many, then One-to-One
    ↓
segment, trees, geography, archive
    ↓
shared ancestor

This is no longer “upload a file and look at the percentages”. It is genealogical research in which DNA is one more source, next to a parish register and a revision list.

Checklist: the setup can be treated as finished

DNA

  • The original file is uploaded, not a PDF and not an ethnicity report
  • The kit has been processed
  • The same person has not been uploaded a second time
  • Sex is set for the person who tested
  • The testing company is named

Profile

  • The alias has a surname and a place
  • Geography is written both in the historical form and in the modern one
  • Surname spellings stand next to each other
  • Haplogroups are entered only when they are known from a test

Visibility

  • You chose Public, Personal Research or Private yourself and understand what follows
  • The difference between Opt-In and Opt-Out is clear, including the fact that under Opt-Out a comparison with unidentified remains may still happen

Tree

  • A GEDCOM is uploaded
  • Living people are hidden before the export
  • The kit is attached to the card of the person who tested

Projects

  • Projects were searched by surname, region and historical area, not only by the modern country
  • The kit that goes into the project is from the side of the family the project studies
  • The application names a specific ancestor, a place and the surnames of that line

Reading

  • One-to-Many is open
  • Interesting matches are checked in One-to-One
  • If relatives are uploaded, matches are compared with them too
  • Segments are set beside trees and documents

If your ancestors are from Belarus

Belarusian genealogy rarely fits inside modern borders. The same ancestor could have lived in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the Russian Empire, in interwar Poland, in the BSSR and in present-day Belarus. Someone looks for him today as Belarusian, and the record sits in an archive the researcher will open as Lithuanian, Polish or Ukrainian.

That is why I run Ancestor Project Belarus on GEDmatch. The idea is simple: gather in one place people whose ancestors are tied to the territory of present-day Belarus, and look at shared DNA segments inside that group. The number of members by itself gives little. The interest starts when a segment can be laid next to a surname, a village, a tree and an archival file.

If that is where you come from and you want to see first whether your kit is ready for an application, start with the short page. The full setup is the four articles above.

Official GEDmatch pages

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