Series. Overview · 1. File · 2. Profile · 3. Projects · Choosing · 4. Matches
This is one of the most important parts of the whole procedure.
DNA can be uploaded in a few minutes. But if the kit then looks like this:
John Male Ancestry
a possible relative has almost nothing to do with it. He sees a match and does not see which country, which district and which surname to search you by.
GEDmatch recommends putting as much as you can on the kit and singles out the company where the test was done. Below is which of those fields later does the work in genealogy.
Name and alias
GEDmatch lets you use an alias instead of your real name. Match lists show the alias when the field is filled. Otherwise people see the name from registration.
Vitaly Khoruzhko can be written as Khoruzhko, Pinsk, Rakow, Logoisk.
Under the site terms the alias is displayed instead of the name. Inconsistent use of an alias can still reveal the real name through linked genealogical data. So the alias has to be both careful and useful for a search.
Poor choices that do nothing inside a project:
DNA123
Kit1
John
Test
A stranger cannot tell from a label like that whom to look for. A surname and a place settle that at once.
If one account holds several relatives, sign each of them separately:
Waznik, Rakow, Ihumen, Belaruchi, Svenciany
Keep the same surname on MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA and Ancestry. Otherwise a person finds your kit on GEDmatch and does not find the tree where you actually keep it.
Company, sex and haplogroups
The testing company is a small field, and it is very useful. Write AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA or Living DNA.
Why? Because a match’s family tree often sits not on GEDmatch but on the original platform. GEDmatch notes that the company helps you work with shared matches and look for more information in that tree. Without the company a person sees a number and does not know where to go next.
Sex has to match the person the kit belongs to. If you manage your father’s kit, set Male. If you upload your mother’s DNA, set Female. Not your own sex. This matters especially for the X chromosome: the wrong sex breaks the way that match is read.
Haplogroups. If you know a Y-DNA or mtDNA haplogroup from the matching test or from the company’s output, enter it. If you do not, leave the field empty. GEDmatch says these fields can be left blank. A guessed haplogroup is worse than an empty field: it looks like a fact and sends the search the wrong way. A real haplogroup is better taken from a test made for that purpose.
And mark honestly whose DNA this is: yours, a deceased person’s, or a person who allowed the upload. What you may upload is covered in the article on the file.
Which visibility to choose
GEDmatch offers four main modes. This is not a technical detail. It is your choice of how you allow your DNA to be used. The description below is checked against Privacy & Security and Community Safety.
| Mode | What happens |
|---|---|
| Public + Opt-In | The DNA takes part in ordinary genealogical matching and in the GEDmatch PRO comparisons that are provided for, including searches for suspects in violent crimes |
| Public + Opt-Out | The DNA takes part in ordinary genealogical matching, but is excluded from GEDmatch PRO comparisons tied to searches for suspects in violent crimes. A comparison with unidentified human remains may still remain |
| Personal Research | You see other kits. Your kit is not shown in other users’ match reports |
| Private | The kit does not take part in matching |
For an ordinary search for relatives and for an Ancestor Project, two public modes fit: Public + Opt-In and Public + Opt-Out. Both are visible to genealogists. The difference is above all about the extra GEDmatch PRO comparisons.
If you choose Opt-Out, the kit may still take part in the searches for unidentified human remains that the rules provide for. That is worth understanding before you tick the box, not after.
Personal Research and Private empty a project application. You may still see other people. The administrator and the other genealogists do not find you in comparisons. For a project that is an empty application.
The setting can be changed later, in kit management. Deleting the DNA is not the same as changing visibility. If you want to stop taking part in the database, delete the kit. A kit hidden as Private stays in the database. GEDmatch says so on the privacy page.
A tree with places of life or birth
Without places a kit is a number of centimorgans. With places it can be tied to a parish.
A GEDCOM can come from a genealogy program or from Ancestry, MyHeritage, Geni. Before the upload, look at privacy. The file often holds living relatives as well as ancestors, and the tree on GEDmatch is searched by users of the site, not only by your matches.
So:
- Export the tree as a
.gedfile. - Mark living people hidden before the export, not after.
- Upload the file in the genealogy section on GEDmatch.
- Attach the kit to the card of the person who tested.
If the DNA belongs to your father, the kit has to be linked to your father’s card. Not to yours. Not to a grandfather. Not to the first person in the tree your eye landed on. Otherwise the matches will look as if they belong to another branch, and you will start looking for the shared ancestor in the wrong place.
For genealogical DNA research a tree with places of residence is far more useful than a tree that has only names.
Ivan Mukharovsky
says very little.
This already does:
Ivan Mukharovsky, about 1860, Pinsk district, Minsk Governorate
It creates a research hypothesis: which district, which fond, which surnames to check nearby.
For Belarus it is especially useful to write the historical or the modern name in one line. Historical borders moved, and a search by the modern country alone hides part of the family history.
village of Such-and-such, Such-and-such volost, Pinsk district, Minsk Governorate modern name: … district, … region, Belarus
A thin tree of a few known ancestors with places is more useful than an empty account and more useful than a sheet with no geography. You do not have to wait until the whole pedigree is rebuilt back to the seventeenth century. The tree is filled in later. The kit number does not change because of that.
And write the surname variants. In Central and Eastern Europe one family lives in the documents under several spellings:
Долмат / Довмат / Доўмат / Dowmat / Doumat
Those are different search strings. If the tree holds only one of them, another researcher may not recognise their own surname.
This kit can then be taken into a project: how to join and what to write to the administrator.