Hi, I’m Tomo, co-founder & CEO of Genomelink/YourRoots.
In this post, I want to introduce Tree Match, a new feature in YourRoots v2.
Since we launched our first genealogy tool, YourRoots Map, we’ve seen many Genomelink users import their existing family trees from sites like Ancestry, MyHeritage, and FamilySearch, or from software like Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic. Today we have a pool of hundreds of millions of ancestors, and tree owners waiting to find common ancestors among them. (A published slice of that pool is browsable in our Family Tree directory.)
So, as the next step, we built Tree Match. It’s very simple, and yes, many other genealogy sites have something similar, but we’re trying to do it a little differently.
Once you join YourRoots and import your family tree (GEDCOM) or start building one in the Tree Editor, you can run Tree Match. You can run it manually, or let our system run it in the background and suggest potential common ancestors to review. You’ll see a list of potential common ancestors from across our tree database. Currently we match on name, birth/death year, and location, but we plan to let you adjust the matching logic soon.
Here is an example result from Queen Victoria’s tree. You can filter common ancestors with the chips at the top:
- New parents found: a matched tree records a father or mother that your tree is missing for that ancestor (an end-of-line ancestor on your side).
- Score B+: shows ancestors with at least one match scored B or higher. The score is our reliability grade (A, B, or C) for a person in the matched tree. It adds up three things: how complete the basics are (full name, a birth or death year, a place), how well sourced the person is (a record attached, citation details, more than one source), and whether a descendant has records attached too. B or higher means the basics are there and there’s some sourcing behind them.
- Has records: I’d prioritize this one. It filters for ancestors where at least one match has records attached.
Once you pick a common ancestor you’re interested in, run “Compare Tree.”
Compare Tree runs a deeper matching analysis between your tree and the other tree owner’s tree. It goes through all ancestors on both sides again and shows you every potential common ancestor together. Each candidate comes with full details, and you can run a closer comparison with Compare Person.
What I’d check first is ancestors with strong record availability. You can see each ancestor’s attached record sources and go straight to the records on Ancestry or FamilySearch when they’re available. Ancestry may need a subscription to view, but we also give you a way to find the record on FamilySearch for free. For US-born ancestors, you can also check our free US Census index.
Once you’ve verified the information against records, you decide whether to add it to your tree. You can edit your tree manually in your main tree editor, or use Tree Compare to import the person’s information, and whole branches of direct ancestors or descendants, in bulk. Then export the file back to your original tree editor.
To protect our system capacity, Tree Match is currently limited to one scan per day per tree, but you can run it as often as you like across days. We’ll also update the full tree database frequently and notify you when new matches are found.
That’s it for now. If you’d like to try Tree Match, create your account, set up your profile, import your tree (GEDCOM), then open yourroots.com/tree/matching. I hope you enjoy it!
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