Family Historian User Group

Hi
I would appreciate members' thoughts on my Ancestry match. I logged on to Ancestry to look at the new longest match tool. Eventually, after searching, found it. Thought very interesting and could be helpful. At the same time I discovered a new quite high match - interesting. I emailed but par for the course have not heard back and she has no tree. I then decided to find her myself so started with shared matches. Great - I think I know which line she is on. I then looked at the longest segment for all the shared matches. (I know Ancestry have commented that the longest segment could be more than the total match - but I would not expect that to be by a large amount) Every match had a longest segment of 68 cms. My new match is 197 cms and one second cousin is over 200 but the rest of shared are in the 20 cms. I think something has gone wrong with their algorithm - what do FH members think please?
Stay safe and well
Ann

I believe the longest segment is calculated before the TIMBER algorithm is applied, so conceivably that discrepancy is 'expected'.

Hi Helen
I know Ancestry had said that the fact there may be a longer largest segment than the total match because of residual DNA but I hadn't connected that they have worked out the longest segment before the TIMBER algorithm - thank you. However the fact that every shared match contains exactly the same number for the longest segment is really strange.
Ann

If it's a known pile-up region, I can see how it might happen.

Apparently this is a known bug that has been reported to Ancestry many times, & which they are allegedly working on. It happens when you view a match from the shared matches list. There are some workarounds to getting the correct value -

1 From the shared match list you can click on a match and then just refresh that page.

2 You can click on the amount of DNA instead of the match to get a pop-up with the largest segment information.

3 You can just search for the match in your main match list.