Coming Soon: Y-DNA Haplogroups for Family Finder

[Riverman]

I need new matches, closer to me genealogically. Chances are they are among FF testers even if they no longer match me and my father autosomally.
But there are good candidates among my STR matches too, which are unresponsive unfortunately.

[Mabrams]

"are unresponsive unfortunately."

Yeah, no kidding. 

I wrote an email to 15 Y12 men with the key Family Finder SNP on April 15.    (15 on the 15th)

Only 2 have replied.  One 5 minutes later and one 2 hours later.  Nada from the other 13.

The two hour guy has his YDNA horribly messed up by FTDNA.  Working on that one.

The other guy went out and bought a BigY later that night, so fingers crossed, maybe something useful will come out of that one. Ironically, he is a maternal 6th cousin.

None of the 13 non-replies had an email bounce back and all are Y37 or better.  But its also possible they tested years ago and are no longer active.  Or maybe I will hear gradually from them.

[Georgian1950]

"are unresponsive unfortunately."

Yeah, no kidding. 

I wrote an email to 15 Y12 men with the key Family Finder SNP on April 15.    (15 on the 15th)

Only 2 have replied.  One 5 minutes later and one 2 hours later.  Nada from the other 13.

You are lucky to exceed a ten percent response rate.

[leonardo]

I apologize if this is slightly off topic but I have noticed for awhile that Family Finder's "common" and "not in common" isn't very accurate. Both my mother and I have tested with FF and when I bring up her match then click on the option "not in common" I get matches that I know I share with her. It's even worse if I click on one of those "not in common" matches and then click on their "common" matches. The matches with my mother become even more obvious which reinforces that the supposed "not in common" match with my mother should be a "common" match. This gives me little faith in their matching system.

[Riverman]

The new assignments can be helpful even if they don't cover downstream branches but you know the context. Like I got a new match I was excited about, but he was placed upstream of my main branch. And the reason for this placement seems to be that he belongs to the sister branch of my main branch, which being not covered by the FF assignments. So basically all people placed upstream of my main branch are highly likely to belong to this sister branch which got no assignment of its own. They are all out for me, since they can't be close, not even within the last 3.000 years.
Since a large portion of my matches belongs to this siblilng branch, it helps to sort all those not that closely related matches out. That's something I guess.

[Mitchell-Atkins]

The new assignments can be helpful even if they don't cover downstream branches but you know the context. Like I got a new match I was excited about, but he was placed upstream of my main branch. And the reason for this placement seems to be that he belongs to the sister branch of my main branch, which being not covered by the FF assignments. So basically all people placed upstream of my main branch are highly likely to belong to this sister branch which got no assignment of its own. They are all out for me, since they can't be close, not even within the last 3.000 years.
Since a large portion of my matches belongs to this siblilng branch, it helps to sort all those not that closely related matches out. That's something I guess.

I would be thrilled within the last 3000 years, but it appears FTDNA didn’t include significant SNPs below U152>L2>Z49 which was 4500 years ago.  This is an initial assessment based on the increase in Z49 assignments in the FTDNA U152 project…more green “Z49”, less red “M269”.

Currently there are 1200 Z49> Z142 samples in in the FTDNA database but I don’t think this SNP is being tested in this update.  Z142 was around 2300 BC.


 440 sample in Z49>Z142>Z12222, Z150, but neither SNP appears to be included.  Again before 2000 BC on this branch.

Sorry to whine.  Just a little frustrated when I see others getting huge benefits from this update.

[Riverman]

The new assignments can be helpful even if they don't cover downstream branches but you know the context. Like I got a new match I was excited about, but he was placed upstream of my main branch. And the reason for this placement seems to be that he belongs to the sister branch of my main branch, which being not covered by the FF assignments. So basically all people placed upstream of my main branch are highly likely to belong to this sister branch which got no assignment of its own. They are all out for me, since they can't be close, not even within the last 3.000 years.
Since a large portion of my matches belongs to this siblilng branch, it helps to sort all those not that closely related matches out. That's something I guess.

I would be thrilled within the last 3000 years, but it appears FTDNA didn’t include significant SNPs below U152>L2>Z49 which was 4500 years ago.  This is an initial assessment based on the increase in Z49 assignments in the FTDNA U152 project…more green “Z49”, less red “M269”.

Currently there are 1200 Z49> Z142 samples in in the FTDNA database but I don’t think this SNP is being tested in this update.  Z142 was around 2300 BC.


 440 sample in Z49>Z142>Z12222, Z150, but neither SNP appears to be included.  Again before 2000 BC on this branch.

Sorry to whine.  Just a little frustrated when I see others getting huge benefits from this update.

It can always be better or worse, based on the kind of random selection of SNP's. My branch is better off, having a TMRCA in the LBA, but there are subbranches of my main which get to the Medieval period. Those are the really lucky ones...

[rmstevens2]

I'm still waiting on Y-DNA assignments for some of my FF matches with my surname. If they land reasonably in my ballpark, I may offer to help with or pay for Big Y-700 testing.

[ArmandoR1b]

I'm still waiting on Y-DNA assignments for some of my FF matches with my surname. If they land reasonably in my ballpark, I may offer to help with or pay for Big Y-700 testing.

It seems they are only doing a relatively small number of existing kits at a time. Someone posted that the tree updated with about 3,000 haplogroups recently. I still have a lot of male Family Finder matches without a haplogroup but one finally has one and it helps because it's a male line I am interested in. Unless they speed things up I suppose it will take at least several months for all of the male customers with FF to get a haplogroup.

[Riverman]

I'm still waiting on Y-DNA assignments for some of my FF matches with my surname. If they land reasonably in my ballpark, I may offer to help with or pay for Big Y-700 testing.

It seems they are only doing a relatively small number of existing kits at a time. Someone posted that the tree updated with about 3,000 haplogroups recently. I still have a lot of male Family Finder matches without a haplogroup but one finally has one and it helps because it's a male line I am interested in. Unless they speed things up I suppose it will take at least several months for all of the male customers with FF to get a haplogroup.

At the current rate, they might work on it well into the next year. The last update was fairly significant, the problem is that they make big pauses in between. I think they have limited resources and can't update the data base and doing new samples simultaneously or something like that.
Well, I have a couple of BigY testers in the pipeline which should be prioritised indeed, but I really wonder about their promises if they simply don't have the capacities to fulfil them in time. Better late than never, but it leaves a bit of a bad taste still.

[ArmandoR1b]

It seems they are only doing a relatively small number of existing kits at a time. Someone posted that the tree updated with about 3,000 haplogroups recently. I still have a lot of male Family Finder matches without a haplogroup but one finally has one and it helps because it's a male line I am interested in. Unless they speed things up I suppose it will take at least several months for all of the male customers with FF to get a haplogroup.

At the current rate, they might work on it well into the next year. The last update was fairly significant, the problem is that they make big pauses in between. I think they have limited resources and can't update the data base and doing new samples simultaneously or something like that.
Well, I have a couple of BigY testers in the pipeline which should be prioritised indeed, but I really wonder about their promises if they simply don't have the capacities to fulfil them in time. Better late than never, but it leaves a bit of a bad taste still.

I'm hopeful that they finish before the end of the year or even in a few months. They have stated the cause of the slowdown. If they can ramp things up then they will be able to get a lot of them completed. It really shouldn't take too many resources to run an automated script to get the Y-DNA SNPs. But if they are at capacity for all of the testing and so on then I can see it taking as long as a full year. I don't have a bad taste for it taking so long. I have a bad taste for them never doing it in the first place when 23andme has been doing it for years but at least they are doing it now.

[Hygelac]

I'm still waiting on Y-DNA assignments for some of my FF matches with my surname. If they land reasonably in my ballpark, I may offer to help with or pay for Big Y-700 testing.

It seems they are only doing a relatively small number of existing kits at a time. Someone posted that the tree updated with about 3,000 haplogroups recently. I still have a lot of male Family Finder matches without a haplogroup but one finally has one and it helps because it's a male line I am interested in. Unless they speed things up I suppose it will take at least several months for all of the male customers with FF to get a haplogroup.

These are my rough estimates of how many FF kits have received haplogroups so far.

2023 December: 37000
2024 January: 4000
2024 April: 24000

I'm afraid they've to speed up things considerably if all FF kits are going to receive haplogroups this year.

[ArmandoR1b]

These are my rough estimates of how many FF kits have received haplogroups so far.

2023 December: 37000
2024 January: 4000
2024 April: 24000

I'm afraid they've to speed up things considerably if all FF kits are going to receive haplogroups this year.

They slowed down in January due to technical issues.They are ramping back up. They had planned on doing 2,000 per day at first then ramping up even more per day. If everything is running smooth there should be a noticeable increase soon.

Lets say there are 1 million male FF customers at FTDNA without Big Y or SNP pack tests. They would have to do about 142,000 per month to finish before the end of the year. So you guys are right that it will go into next year if there are that many male FF customers at FTDNA without Big Y or SNP pack tests and if FTDNA doesn't massively ramp up the reporting. However, I expect them to ramp up the reporting significantly soon now that they have started processing the kits again this year. No one really knows how many male FF customers at FTDNA without Big Y or SNP pack tests there are but once most of us see that our male FF matches have a haplogroup and the Y-DNA testers in public projects with a red SNP is reduced significantly we will be able to tell that they are close to done.

[Mabrams]

I would estimate 300,000 Family Finder kits to update.

1.7 million database
subtract 55% females
------
765,000 males
subtract 45% autosomal transfers
------
420,000 men with FF kits
subtract 25% with Adv SNPs already
------
315,000 FF men to be updated.

Some of those men are going to be V1s and not the current V2 GSA. Not sure what percentage that might be, nor how extensive are the V1 YSNPs.

I did not factor MyHeritage into the above.

% above reflect files I have access to, and info exchanges with a couple of other people. Other people may see different % but I think the overall conclusion will be similar.

Just to allow myself some leeway, I'll say 200 to 400,000 men to be updated.

[Riverman]

I would estimate 300,000 Family Finder kits to update.

1.7 million database
subtract 55% females
------
765,000  males
subtract 45% autosomal transfers
------
420,000 men with FF kits
subtract 25% with Adv SNPs already
------
315,000 FF men to be updated.

Some of those men are going to be V1s and not the current V2 GSA.  Not sure what percentage that might be, nor how extensive are the V1 YSNPs.

I did not factor MyHeritage into the above. 

% above reflect files I have access to, and info exchanges with a couple of other people.  Other people may see different % but I think the overall conclusion will be similar.

Just to allow myself some leeway, I'll say 200 to 400,000 men to be updated.

If I add the MyHeritage upload and being a bit more generous, I think we can calculate with about 400.000 male testers which will eventully being tested and their results shown in the BigY tree.
Starting from that number, my main branch seems to have a frequency in the testing population of 0,14 (FTDNA) to 0,21 (23andMe) in the data base. If I calculate with 0,2 % this should result in about 800 new branch members at the end of the day. So far less than a quarter appeared in the BigY tree, which means they have less than 1/4 of the data base assigned yet.
In the 23andMe data base there should be by comparison more than 14.000 and in Ancestry more than 26.000. These are all rather conservative and low numbers, because 23andMe doesn't recognise my branch with older chips and the FTDNA percentage I got by using BigY numbers. But there are way more non-Europeans doing BigY like from Arab states than there are European Family Finder testers in my opinion, which means the real number should be closer to the 23andMe percentage and about or above 0,2 %.

In any case, a huge number of distant male relatives from the Late Bronze Age has already DNA tested (about 40.000 - 80.000 would be my guess). yet the BigY tested fraction is much smaller of course and just in the hundreds. Lots of potential, that's my takeaway. If Ancestry DNA would add a similar resolution as FTDNA/23andMe, which they probably can't, because their chip covers less SNP's, that would really help to find male relatives.
Like I got lots and lots of matches on Ancestry and MyHeritage in particular which could be matches on the paternal line, some being really old, like potentially Medieval era common ancestors. Having the assignment there would probably help a bit more because with distant genealogical matches its always a numbers game, since you just match a very tiny fraction of your genealogical relatives that distant from yourself (early modern/medieval). Probably we have no autosomal matching left at all with any male descendant, that's possible too unfortunately, after centuries have gone by.