For the adoptee looking for birth family: how GEDmatch can help in your search.

Adoptees looking for their birth families often do DNA testing.  The thing is, Ancestry DNA is tightly linked to family trees, and if you don't have names of your birthparents and grandparents, a family tree won't help you.

GEDmatch - no names required. You should still get "non-identifying information", and anything else you can get out of the state or adoption agency.  Stuff like "Your birth mother was Swedish, your birth father was part Native American, part Irish" will be indispensible when using GEDmatch.  If you don't have any info, GEDmatch can still work, it will just be harder.

Searching strategies for adoptees on GEDmatch:

1. Build your DNA library.  Start with your closest matches, use the chromosome browsing tool, and make your library of who matches you where of each chromosome.

2. Look for multiple matches from the same email. That is someone who got multiple family members tested. If they have had 1st and 2nd cousins tested, you may get a branch of your family.  This worked for a DNA relative of mine, the 1st week she was on GEDmatch.

3. Use the "people who match one or both of 2 kits" tool to sort your matches in groups.  And you will need separate spreadsheets to keep this info straight. And you can run them "one-to-one" against each other, to find out if they are close cousins to each other, and find more branches.

4. Run the ethnicity tools.  Find out all your ethnicities.  Find out the ethnicities of your closest matches. Take the example above, where adoptee knows that birth father was part Native American.  Find out which matches have this ethnicity, mark them in your library.

5. Look for clusters.   Find 2 or more people that match you and themselves in the same place.  You all share a common ancestor. Contact them to see if they know who it is, or any commonality, like born in the same state or county.  If you get any information, put that down in your DNA library as well.

6. Keep asking your Ancestry DNA matches to go on GEDmatch. Especially anyone up to and including the 4th to 6th cousins.  My brother and I only have 16 DNA matches that are rated 4th to 6th or closer, and half won't talk to us!!  If you can even get a few to go on, it will raise the chances of finding close birth family.