I logged into Ancestry this morning and immediately noticed that the pagination for AncestryDNA matches was changed. You can no longer see how many pages of matches you have.
Why is this important? Ancestry does NOT tell you how many TOTAL matches you have. Knowing how many pages you had was the only way to mathematically tell the total amount of matches. Each page has 50 pages so, for me, I have 135 complete pages of matches and 22 on page 136 for a total of 6.772 matches of which, 273 are 4th cousins or higher. Ancestry will tell you the amount of shared 4th cousin and higher matches but they are evasive on the total number.
If Ancestry makes changes to their algorithm either taking away or removing matches, it is now much harder to track that since they removed the total number of pages. It also makes maneuvering through matches tedious.
Why is this happening? Web code was on the site earlier this morning that people can opt-out DNA matches being seen. In other words, your matches might disappear and you might have new future cousins that have opted out of having DNA matching. While I see why Ancestry is doing this (some only care about the ethnicity portion), instead of sliding this feature in, I think they should have been more transparent. I get it: not all stories have happy endings, most don’t, and there should be a way to address the diversity in family stories.
On a positive note, it will open up DNA testing to more people. For those hesitant to test, there is no reason not too now as there is complete privacy and selective privacy. For example, sharing DNA results only with someone they trust.
My advice? If you are looking for family go in now and take screenshots of trees, matches, etc. while you can.
