Why You Should Revisit Your DNA Test Results—Even Years Later

It was just after Christmas, and my mom was visiting me in Florida. She was on the couch reading a book while I squeezed in a little work.

Years earlier, she’d taken a DNA test, mostly because I asked her to. We knew she was adopted. And over time we’d explored a few different avenues to learn more about her biological family. But nothing urgent. Nothing consistent. Just slow progress and long pauses.

Then I saw it. A brand-new match had appeared at the top of her list—a close one. The kind of match that has all the right qualities to shift your research from guessing to knowing. From scattered clues to a clear path forward.

And all it took was logging in again.

For many, DNA is something you did—past tense. Testing was a box you checked when you saw a good sale or someone said DNA could answer your questions. Perhaps you spent all of five minutes viewing your results: looking at your ethnicity estimate and scrolling through a match list until the names started to blur.

Others went so far as to use (or attempt to use) DNA to help in research. Maybe you grouped some matches, sent a few notes, and even built family trees using automated tools.

And maybe it’s been a minute since you’ve been back to your results. A nagging feeling might tell you that you should go back and take another look. Maybe tomorrow.

That tomorrow has arrived, my friend. Because if you’re not checking in on your DNA regularly, you’re missing potential insights that could lead to big discoveries.

Here’s why you should revisit your DNA test results—and use them in your research—even years after you tested. For each task, I’ll include a suggested follow-up step.

Start with Ethnicity Results

When you first took your test (say, back in 2018), you may been underwhelmed by your ethnicity results. They were likely too broad to be of much help and had a much-too-high Scandinavian estimate.

But your 2025–26 results bear little resemblance to their 2018 counterparts.

Better accuracy and precision

Testing companies have all improved their offerings so they’re more specific and more actionable.

That’s especially true at AncestryDNA and MyHeritage DNA. Each released significant ethnicity updates throughout 2025. MyHeritage’s “v.2.5” expanded regional coverage from 42 to 79 groups, offering finer distinctions across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. And Ancestry improved the accuracy and granularity of its estimates, particularly those of community-level settlement patterns in the U.S.

As you can see from the examples above, the 2024/2025 results are much more granular than they were in 2018. Note that AncestryDNA’s latest updates hadn’t been released as of this article’s writing.

Additional ethnicity results: migration groups

As a reminder: Ethnicity results generally come in two “flavors”:

• Regional percentages (28% England & Northwestern Europe, 12% Indigenous Americas, etc.), which are interesting but often vague for genealogy purposes.
• Genetic communities or groups, which reflect where your ancestors likely lived within the last 200 years—a sweet spot for family history research. These have the greater potential for genealogy research.

Ancestry and MyHeritage each have reports on that latter “flavor”: Ancestral Journeys at Ancestry (launched in 2017 and previously known “Genetic Communities” or “Migrations”) and Genetic Groups at MyHeritage (launched in 2020).

23andMe also has valuable genetic groups that give you insight into a more recent time frame. The big difference is that 23andMe’s rely purely on genetics, not extensive genealogical data from family trees.

What can you do with them? Use the slider and timeline provided by Ancestry or MyHeritage to move backward in time and learn about previous generations. In addition to satisfying your curiosity about history, the tools can reveal new locations for you to search for records.

Ancestry’s timeline takes it a step further by overlaying your own family tree, highlighting specific ancestors who may have lived in those regions during each time period. Though it can’t confirm that a particular ancestor is the reason you’re a member of that community,, Ancestral Journeys give you high-confidence leads to follow up on.

And here’s one of the most exciting takeaways: If you see a community or group in your results that’s not yet represented in your family tree, that’s not an error—it’s a clue. That genetic community likely points to a place that should be in your tree but isn’t yet. In other words, your ethnicity results may be hinting at the missing link you’ve been searching for.

At a glance: DNA ethnicity results, 2018 v. 2025

DNA testing arguably reached its high point of popularity in 2018, when the MIT Technology Review reported that 1 million kits were sold per month.

Though interest from new test takers has cooled somewhat since then, the testing companies have continued to update and enhance their test results. Today, users are greeted with more-precise ethnicity estimates, detailed “migration groups” that crack communities, and more analysis and organization tools.

Here’s how today’s results stack up against 2018’s:

	23andMe*	AncestryDNA*	Family Tree DNA	MyHeritage DNA
Test takers in database	2018: 3 million 2025: 15 million	2018: 6 million 2025: 27 million	2018: 1 million 2025 1.7 million	2018: 1 million 2025: 9.5 million
Ethnicity estimate regions	2018: 31 2025: 47	2018: 150 2025: 168	2018: 24 2025: 90	2018: 42 2025: 79
Genetic groups	2018: none 2025: 2,000+	2018: 300+ 2025: 3,000+	none	2018: none 2025: 2,100+
Tools added, 2018–2025	Ancestral Locations (2020, now called Genetic Groups)	Traits (2018) ThruLines (2018) Shared Ancestral Places (2019) SideView (2022) Chromosome painter (2022) Pro Tools (2024)	“Big Y-700” test (2019) X-chromosome-matching (2021) Chromosome-painting (2021)	Theory of Family Relativity (2018) Genetic Groups (2020) Match-labeling (2022) Ancient Origins (2025)

*These figures do not reflect updates issued by 23andMe and AncestryDNA in fall 2025.

What to do next:

Revisit your testing company’s ethnicity section. Review your assigned Ancestral Journeys (at Ancestry) or Genetic Groups (at MyHeritage) or 23andMe). For each, ask yourself:

• Can I identify an ancestor already in my tree who lived in this place during the time shown?
• If not, is this a location I haven’t yet considered that could explain a mystery branch?

These ethnicity tools won’t directly find your missing ancestor, but they might point you to the record set that will.

If you’re not checking in on your DNA regularly, you’re missing potential insights that could lead to big discoveries.

Diahan Southard

Review Your Match List (Again)

Ethnicity results may give you a location. But it’s your match list that gives you people—actual cousins who share your DNA and may hold the key to your mystery ancestors.

You may have tens of thousands of matches—with more and more added each year as new people test and algorithms shift. The match that matters may already be in your list. You just need to know how to find it.

If you didn’t know how to proceed with DNA matches when you first tested, have no fear. A methodical process for evaluating them will prevent you from bouncing from match to match without making any real headway. With a repeatable, structured plan, you’re far more likely to spot the matches and patterns that will make a difference in your research.

At Your DNA Guide, we teach a match-finding plan that starts with identifying your Best Known Matches—relatives you already know. Using the Shared Matches tool, you then gather a list of matches who are related to you and that known relative in a similar way. With those few steps, you’ve stopped the random clicking and begun to find the most-important matches.

Moving forward, ask yourself the following questions to continue using your DNA matches:

• Do I have a system for organizing and grouping my matches?
• Do I regularly revisit my match list to check for changes or new connections?
• Do I have a focused research goal that guides who I’m looking for?

If the answer to any of these is “not really,” it’s time to make a plan.

What to do next

Choose one Best Known Match—someone you recognize as related to the ancestor you want to research. Use your testing company’s Shared Matches tool to view others who match both you and that known cousin. These are the people most likely to be related to that same ancestral line.

Use Relevant DNA Tools

Even the best plan can be derailed by distractions and detours. And DNA testing companies over the years have added plenty of bright shiny tools that clamor for your attention.

This raises a question for you: Is a particular tool helping you move forward, or just fun to play with? The former (a useful tool) should help you accomplish one of these three tasks:

1. Grouping matches to find the most-important for your research
2. Understanding how those matches are related to each other
3. Figuring out how you fit into the picture

Let’s walk through those tasks—and the tools that support them.

1. Grouping your matches

Before you can solve any DNA mystery, you need to focus on a specific branch of your tree. That means gathering matches who are related to that branch, as we talked about in the previous section.

The following can help with this:

• ThruLines at Ancestry and Theory of Family Relativity at MyHeritage can suggest genealogical connections based on the family trees of you and your DNA matches. They provide a shortcut to identifying those “Best Known Matches” that kick-start research.
• Labeling systems on both Ancestry and MyHeritage let you tag and color-code matches so you can create and keep track of groups of them.
• Clustering tools (like Ancestry’s new-in-2025 match clustering and MyHeritage’s AutoClusters) help you visually group matches based on shared DNA. But be careful, as these tools can sometimes be difficult to interpret properly.

2. Understanding how your matches are related to each other

Once you have a group of matches, your next job is to figure out how they are related to each other. If you can find the ancestor this group has in common, that will lead you to the identity of your missing ancestor.

The shared matches of matches tool, now available at most companies (often with an extra fee), lets you explore connections between your matches. This is a game-changer, allowing you to identify close family groups among your matches—a first step to determining how they’re related to each other and to you.

3. Figuring out how you fit in

Now that you understand how the matches relate to each other, it’s time to figure out how you might be connected to them.

BanyanDNA and WATO (What Are the Odds?) from DNA Painter let you build your matches’ tree, then plug in different relationship scenarios to see which ones fit the shared DNA data best. They’re most powerful when you’ve already grouped matches and built their shared tree—allowing you to test different hypotheses for how you’re related.

What to do next:

Choose a family branch. Use match-labeling or clustering to group together and then label matches who are likely connected to that branch. Then use your testing company’s shared matches of matches tool to explore how they relate to each other. From there, try using WATO or BanyanDNA to explore where you might fit in. (That sounds simple when I write it out like that. But be prepared—each step takes time.)

Update Your Online Trees

Your DNA matches and the library of genetic genealogy tools aren’t the only things that have grown over the past years. So has your research—new branches on your family tree, new documents or surnames, and new insights into previous generations.

Every piece of that new information adds context and helps you make better use of your matches. In fact, tools like ThruLines and the Theory of Family Relativity build off your online family tees, meaning they only work as well as your research allows. When your tree gets better, their suggestions get better too.

What to do next:

Make sure your most-updated tree is connected to your DNA kit at Ancestry and/or MyHeritage. This will ensure the company tools are in the best position to work hand in hand with your latest research.

Keep Learning

Your DNA remains the same, even if the technology that analyzes it changes. Stay curious and seek out how-to information about genetic genealogy as it continues to evolve.

Just like anything else in genealogy, you should continue to learn as you go. You don’t need to master everything to get started.

It’s easy to fixate on what you don’t know—how to interpret a match’s family tree or whether 212 cM is “a lot” of shared DNA. But you’ve likely picked up more DNA knowledge than you realize. After all, talk of DNA is everywhere: on your family tree, in your conversations, and in webinars you half-watch while cooking dinner.

Maybe in the past few years, you’ve finally understood what a second cousin is or have recognized familiar surnames on your match list. Those microdiscoveries add up.

What to do next:

Revisit a thorny research problem or long-dreaded task. You don’t need to solve the whole mystery or finish your to-do list—just take a peek to see what’s new, either in your results or in your knowledge base. You might be surprised what starts to click.

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No matter how long it’s been since you last logged in, your DNA test results are still working for you. With new matches, updated tools, and fresh insights, your DNA results are ripe for revisiting. You might even realize you’re not just a genealogist, but a genetic genealogist who can “do” the DNA.

Related Reads

A version of this article appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Family Tree Magazine.