I'm fishing in the 23andme pond

I purchased a 23&me Ancestry test from Target.com for a little over $50(after tax) which included the lab processing fee.  This was during a sale they had which coincided with Amazon Prime Day.  My test sample went out in the mail on July 18th and I had the results by July 27th.  That's amazingly fast!!  A few days ago, I posted a comparison of the ethnicity results of my test on 23&me's latest chip with the results of the AncestryDNA test uploaded during their Discover23 promo on DNA day of 2018.

Now I am "fishing" in all of the big ponds for DNA matches and can give my observations on this test..  I knew that several of my paternal Cook cousins(in the 2nd cousin range) had tested there and not uploaded to GEDmatch yet so I was able to get that segment data for my DNApainter chromosome painting.  Also I found a known maternal 1st cousin & a known 1st Cousin once removed among those in my match list.  Neither of those had uploaded to GEDmatch.

I was also anxious to see what 23&me would come up with for my mtDNA haplogroup.  As I've mentioned in previous blog post, my daughter took the FULL mtDNA test and is H3-T152C!. This backwards mutation is also present in descendants of my 4th Great Grandmother mother's sister so we know it happened prior to 1797.  I think 23&me did pretty well.  They show me as H3.

I have never liked the 23& me interface but they do seem to have made some improvements.  I've used it over the years with some of my daughter's paternal lines who have tested there so I did have something to compare it to as they were earlier testers at the site.

The improvements over the last few years:  

• Ability to assign relationships for each match 
• Relationship chart 
• Notes Sections which is really essential on any site(wish it was at the top but I'll take it)
• Ability to include a link to tree
• I really like the option to download the segment data so I can paint my matches at DNA painter.  I believe this may have been here before but wasn't so obvious.  

It's a bit unclear with the list of shared matches what they mean.  Some you have to request to share to see.  Going to have to read more on that to figure out what it does and doesn't mean.  I'd recommend testing here if you are looking for cousins.  I do feel you are missing out if you don't. If it's not in your budget at the regular price maybe you too can catch it on sale.