How many of my Ancestry Matches have added or removed Trees in the Last 3 Months?

I conducted a review in May 2018 of all my DNA matches on Ancestry and recorded whether the match had a public or private tree, and whether a tree was linked to their DNA. I ran the same review three months later in August 2018, having seen an additional 15 hundred matches added during that time.

The percentage breakdown of public linked/public unlinked/private/none has not changed in rounded numbers. It remains as 40% of my matches have a public linked tree and 27% have at least one public unlinked tree. 7% have only a private tree. 26% had no tree at all.

I’m relieved that the 26% No Tree has not increased. See my May blog post for a comparison with other Ancestry users who have blogged on their numbers. One comment from Blaine Bettinger mentioned he was interested in tracking how many new matches add a tree after a period of time such as a year.

Well, only three months have passed for me but as I have the data to hand, I’ll take a look at the breakdown: of both new matches and also of older matches who have since added a tree within the last three months.

Some good news for me is:
102 matches had no tree in May 2018 and have since added a public or unlinked tree.
28 matches had a private tree and have since added a public or unlinked tree.
7 matches had no tree at all and have since added a private tree.

Ignoring the private trees, in total about 1.2% of my matches added an available tree after some delay in time.

But I must hold off on breaking out the bubbly! Some of my matches went in the reverse direction.

42 matches had a public linked or unlinked tree and have since gone private, leaving no public tree available.
 4 matches had a public linked or unlinked tree and have gone nuclear i.e. they’ve removed any tree from Ancestry.
 0 matches were private and had gone nuclear – just adding that one in for completeness.

It’s still a positive balance.

But it leaves me with a net of 0.8% of older matches who went from no public tree to delivering a new available tree within the last three months.

 

I stated that the overall proportions of tree availability hadn’t changed since my prior evaluation of May 2018. That isn’t the case when I evaluate only the matches who were added within the last three months. Below is a side-by-side.

So that 3 month breakdown is of about 1500 matches, or about 14% of my current overall total. I don’t like to see that the “No Tree” category is proportionally larger at 37% versus the overall 26% figure. It made me triple-check the figures, but that’s the current picture.

Margaret created a family tree on a genealogy website in 2012. She purchased her first DNA kit in 2017. She created this website to share insights and how-to guides on DNA, genealogy, and family research.

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