Genealogy giant Ancestry has reached two significant milestones.
More than 18 million people have taken an AncestryDNA test, creating the largest consumer DNA database, and Newspapers.com now has more than 600 million newspaper pages digitized.
DNA match updates
Ancestry plans to soon update the way DNA matches are calculated and will also show users the length of the longest shared segment with an individual match.
Improved algorithms will reduce about two-thirds of false matches, and that’s good news. The updated algorithms also mean we will no longer see matches with whom we share 8 centimorgans or less. (The current threshold is 6 centimorgans.) That news is being met with less excitement and a bit of concern.
In the article, Thousands of DNA matches will disappear soon, in the latest Lost Cousins newsletter, Peter Calver explains how to keep a number of those small, soon-to-disappear matches if you act quickly.
Debbie Kennett also wrote an informative article about AncestryDNA’s ‘s improvements on her blog, Cruwys news.
Leah Larkin on her blog, The DNA Geek, compares the size of AncestryDNA’s database to other companies.
As for Newspapers.com, there’s been no word if there are plans to add more Canadian newspapers to the 87 already there. The Canadian collection is the second-largest, after the US, with more than 25 million newspaper pages.
