Where to Start on 23andMe — Relative Finder

Welcome Trackers let the DNA Safari begin! By trackers, I mean those following the DNA Footprints that your ancestors left within your body as clues to who you are and where you come from. Adoptees, birth parents and orphans are especially welcome, but anyone on the hunt for their ancestry is welcome — as are constructive comments from anyone. Congrats on taking your first steps along this fascinating road. You’ve made the leap, submitted your sample to 23andMe and your results are rolling in! It’s like the midwinter holiday and your birthday all rolled up in one.  First thing to note is, your Relative Finder results — that’s where you get DNA matches and start searching for your family — don’t populate for you until after they’ve populated for your matches who already had their results. Usually this is about 24 hours later. That’s because they are only adding a few matches for everyone else but adding hundreds of matches for you — hopefully! So if someone contacts you while all you have is your mtDNA results and some health surveys to keep you happy, they are really your matches and possibly your future favorite cousins. They aren’t scamming you. Don’t be afraid or confused. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing too much information yet, why not ask them some questions instead? Explain to them that you’re new and unsure of things and ask about their heritage. Likely anyone that reached out to you the first day you were in the database will be happy to share.

Relative Finder

The first thing to do, once you get your results, is click the link on the left side of the page under the heading My Ancestors that says “Relative Finder”. This is the main page for locating relatives. Be certain that you have clicked the blue button at the top of the page that says, “Show Close Relatives” unless both parties enable this function you will not see matches that are 2nd cousins or closer (if not clicked, it might only block 1st cousins or closer at this time.)

Screen shot of a "Relative Finder" page at 23andMe

As the screen shot above shows, you will see a page that looks something like this (although it will have a different color background depending on what you have set as your default colors on your browser.) At the top, is the information that you’ve added about yourself and set so that your matches can see that information. To change the information, click the “Update Your Profile” button on the right side of the screen next to your name.

Your Relative Finder Profile

Update Profile page available from within Relative Finder.

Here, you can select what your matches will see as your name, indicate what your current residence is, your ancestry and your country of birth. You can also enter many surnames (although there is a limit) and family locations. You should put a comma between each surname you enter so that when folks use the click and filter function, the program knows where one name ends and another begins. If you have a 2 part name, it’s often smart to enter it more than one way. For instance, Van Dyke could be entered that way, or as VanDyke. Also, if you know there are alternate spellings, use them all: Allen, Allan, Alan.

You can also check that the ‘Show my close relatives.’ box is checked or opt out of Relative Finder all together. Although if you do that, you won’t be able to see your relatives and they won’t even know you exist! Clearly this is not something we, as adoptees, want! If you have NO relatives you should make sure this box is NOT checked. Being seen in Relative Finder only reveals as much information as you are willing to share. If you don’t want a surname shown to your relatives, simply don’t enter it in the box. Also you can use the drop downs to select ” — ” for locations and nothing will be shared. Please, feel free to take a guess if you are uncertain but don’t tell an outright lie. This could confuse people as to their heritage or make them believe you are not related to them!

Matches Information

Let’s look at the information that your matches may have chosen to share with you. If you click on the picture near the top of the article with the caption, “Screen shot of a “Relative Finder” page at 23andMe,” it will get larger. There you can see that the information starts with a blue or pink (or grey) head icon indicating their sex. Blue is for males, pink for girls, and grey for those hiding their sex. If you are sharing, or if they are a public match, it will next list their name and beneath it their sex and year of birth, if they chose to share that information with you and their other matches. They could have chosen to share their sex and age even if they didn’t share a name.

The next column gives their most likely relationship to you. This is nearly always a range such as 3rd to 6th cousin or 4th to distant cousin. This is 23andMe’s best guess as to your relationship but even with all their knowledge, DNA transmission from parent to child is random and this estimate could be off a bit. Look for more information about that in a future post. Beneath the cousin range they give you the total percent DNA you share with them and how many segments.

The colorful area right of center on your matches section has the good stuff in it. Here the surnames and locations that they entered into their Relative Finder Profile (see below) are displayed PLUS their mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups. You can make good use of their haplotype information but we’ll discuss that in another post too. When you mouse over these colored bubbles, it will tell you what classification the information falls under, such as surname or location. Since some surnames and locations are similar, this can be helpful. You can also learn the color code. Red is for birthplace, dark green is for current country, orange is their ancestral roots, pink is mtDNA haplogroup, blue is their Y-DNA haplogroup (only males have this), navy blue is their ancestral locations and light green is their family surnames.

You can click on any of those colored bubbles to filter all your matches by what is in the bubble. This is very handy to locate people from similar locations, sharing a surname or comparing a haplotype. To get back to the full list, just clear the ‘Search Matches’ input line at the top of the screen above your section. We’ll cover searching and sorting in another post.

The final column on the right is very important. This will tell you the status of communication with your matches. The top line will invite you to ‘Send an Invitation’ if you haven’t yet. Click on this to do your ‘five a day’ Relative Finder match sharing requests. Beneath that, it will tell you whether you’ve sent an invitation or what the status is. This is limited information. It only tells you if you’ve sent an invitation, whether your match declined the invitation (Declining is FOREVER), or accepted. It won’t tell you whether the other person looked at your invitation or is even aware of its existance.

WARNING: Do not click decline if you’re still learning! If you’re not sure you want to share just do nothing. The invitation will wait until you’re ready to decide. I don’t know why an adoptee would EVER decline an invitation from a match although whether you accept invitations from others who are just curious is up to you. I accept sharing from everyone. You can always unshare later and, at the basic sharing level, there isn’t even any medical information shared. It just allows your matches to see where you match them on their chromosomes and allows them to see what information you’ve put into your profile that you’ve restricted to being seen by those you share with only.

The bottom row of the final column will let you view or cancel your invitation. If you cancel your invitation after 30 days, you can send another invitation right away. If you cancel two days after you’ve sent the invitation, you can’t send another invitation for 28 more days. Be very cautious! You can only send 3 invitations EVER, over the WHOLE of your lifetime! I sent poorly worded, over excited invitations to my top five relatives my first day and I deeply regret it. We’ll cover invitation composition in another post, but if you’re unsure what to say, use the default message. On the bottom row it will also allow you to view your conversation, if you’ve had any, with your relative. Be aware that this will only let you see conversations you’ve had through the Relative Finder page! If you sent a message to them from their profile page or through the email system, you will not see it here. This is one of the most annoying things about 23andMe and I truly condemn them for having such a poor communication system between customers.

Notes Window

The 23andMe Relative Finder Notes Window.

As you mouse over your matches, their section of information will highlight. If you then click on any blank space within a matches section, it will bring up the notes pop-up window. This gives you additional information on your predicted relationship, gives you a drop down to indicate their relationship to you once you figure it out, and provides a blank ‘Notes’ field where you can keep information organized about each relative. For instance, if, once they are talking to you,  they’ve told you additional information such as their ancestor’s first names, dates of birth or locations, you can enter it here. You might also want to enter information such as which side of each of your familys you suspect they are related to you through, if they have a genetic trait that runs in families, or a  personal email address if they’ve shared it with you.

One item I’d like to see added to the notes window is the chromosome and location of each segment you share with your match. Even if they had to restrict this to the folks that are sharing only, it would be helpful, but it is my strong belief they should show this information for everyone. They do that on FTDNA and no one has come to any harm from it. They have a cute little app that we will discuss later that lets you go and look this information up for those who share with you or who are public matches, but having everything integrated would make their site much more user-friendly.

This post is fairly long, so we’ll discuss your ’5 a Day’ Relative Finder invites in the next post.

Images credits: 23andMe inc.