Custom Clusters

 

Ancestry Custom Clusters. Oct 2025.

Yesterday a new feature within Ancestry's ProTools appeared for me, allowing for the creation of custom clusters. This is an improvement on the Clusters tool launched earlier in the summer. I'm still testing this out. I created a cluster using a known match on my Dad's side of the tree who is part of the Pennsylvania O'Briens group, and the tool did pull in many of the people who I've already looked at with Shared Matches of Matches that I think are connected to each other.

You can start a cluster with a match of interest who has less than 20 cM in common with your tester, and the tool will pull in some of those people who have been 20 cM and 1300 cM in common with the match of interest and who also may have cM in common with your tester. I tried this to isolate a group who might be connected with my Bridget side of the tree. You can generate up to 25 clusters, and these will stay on your page for 30 days unless added to a group.

I then tried this with the mystery Guerrero-Leyva matches on my Mom's side of the tree. While there's a lot of overlap, it does show a group of people connected together. This gives me some new ideas to try and people to investigate to see how they are related. It's definitely faster than the DNAPainter method I tried in August.

Ancestry. Custom Cluster.