February 10, 2026: Less Flustering, More Clustering: Working Your Matches and Shared Matches to Solve Mysteries

Here are some links to thinks we talked about this month.

Blaine Bettinger’s “A Triangulation Intervention” blog post which talks about the different reasons matches will appear on a shared matches list: https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2016/06/19/a-triangulation-intervention/

Paula Williams’s “Solving a Virginia Mystery Using DNA” webinar which spends more time on the identification of William Johnson’s grandparents using DNA and dots: https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/solving-a-virginia-mystery-using-dna/

Diahan Southard’s “Shared DNA Matches – the only DNA Tool You will Ever Need” talk from RootsTech 2023 talking about filing matches into groups vs. filtering: https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/shared-dna-matches-the-only-dna-tool-you-will-ever-need

Blaine Bettinger video about sub-clustering shared matches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ApidzEyA_k

Ancestry Custom Clusters:
https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Custom-Match-Clusters
https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Science-of-Matches-by-Cluster
https://www.ancestry.com/c/ancestry-blog/dna/using-custom-clusters-to-find-dna-matches

Family Locket “How to Use AncestryDNA Custom Clusters in Your Research” video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDxxR3GUntE

Also, Angie Bush is doing a live and on demand workshop for NGS with recordings available through October: https://www.ngsgenealogy.org/gentechtoolbox/ancestrydna-custom-clusters/

MyHeritage Auto Clusters and Labeling:
https://education.myheritage.com/article/autoclusters-for-dna-matches/
https://education.myheritage.com/article/how-to-use-labels-to-break-new-ground-with-your-dna-matches/

23andMe’s clustering tool: https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/comments/1qidii0/new_beta_feature_dna_relatives_clustering/

Roberta Estes’s post about Genetic Affairs and FTDNA: https://dna-explained.com/2026/02/10/autokinship-by-genetic-affairs-builds-family-trees-from-your-matches-at-familytreedna-and-more/

Discover more from Genealogical Research Institute of Virginia (GRIVA)

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading