Ancestry Matches Map To Revolutionize Genealogical Research

The Ancestry Matches Map is still in its beta form; however, once it is in full production will revolutionize genealogical research. This is the wave of the future! I’ve been preaching this for some time now and even wrote an article addressing the need for some type of geolocation feature on Ancestry – it’s high time they see my vision for the future. Just being facetious!

FURTHER READING: “1 Ancestry Search Engine Problem That Needs Mapping“

Matches Map Limitations

This new Ancestry toy is really neat, however just about anyone could find fault with it as it stands. It does not show you all of your matches and is limited to only 2nd-4th cousins. So let’s just get those complaints out of the way! Again, this thing is in the beta stage and hopefully will be improved in the coming months. I have garnered an increased faith in Ancestry as they have rolled out some pretty cool upgrades over the last year.

Using The Maps

It’s all very simple and intuitive. Just use the new BETA button on the top of your AncestryDNA results page. Click it and you’re away to the map page!

You will see a map open up full screen that will undoubtedly have less pins that you might expect. That is because a user needs to have input their location on their profile in order for that location to register on this map. While it would be nice if that was automatic, there is that whole ‘information privacy’ thing! Not all users choose to share their location, myself included. However, I might reconsider if this Matches Map thing really kicks into high gear.

If you choose to add your location so that other matches can find you, just click on the “add your location” menu. You can also filter the matches by relationship using the “filter by relationship” menu just above that – shown in the image below. Again, at present, you can only search 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins.

Improving The Matches Map

Some improvements I’d like to see for the future would be more matches, a wider range of matches, and a genealogy geolocation tool. Obviously more is better and the matches tool would dramatically increase its utility if ALL of your relationships could show up.

More importantly, what I’ve been saying for a while now, is that having some sort of geolocation tool would revolutionize genealogical research. This would be in the form of showing how individual pins are related to one another (not just you) and be able to plot out some sort of genealogical tree overlay showing how descendants of a single – or multiple – ancestor migrated across time and space. Basically, Ancestry needs to integrate both its research databases and its DNA databases into a mapping interface.

For example, I literally have hundreds of cousins in Virginia yet this matches map shows exactly ZERO. I have deep Virginia roots yet you wouldn’t be able to tell that by this map, at present.

Despite that, this article is not meant to heap any sort of negativity on the new Ancestry Matches Map, quite the opposite. My intention here is to praise this new beta feature and hope for more improvements in the future because this is going to be one of the coolest new features for an Ancestry.com that is aggressively recapturing the genealogy/DNA market.

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