MyHeritage’s results dramatically diverged from the other tests I took, which had been for the most part in agreement with family history and records. MyHeritage said I was 69 percent English, which seems odd since my father is most certainly from German and Swedish ancestry and we aren’t aware of any English on his side.
In contrast, AncestryDNA pegged me at only 26 percent British, 34 percent West European, and 21 percent Scandinavian. 23andMe gave similar results as AncestryDNA. These breakdowns are in line with my family records and history.
MyHeritage also only identified three ethnic groups for me: British (69 percent), North and West European (29 percent), and Finnish (2 percent). Those results seem overly simplified when compared to the other tests I’ve taken. AncestryDNA, for example, divided me into four ethnicities and four low confidence ethnicities, totaling eight different cultures.
MyHeritage says that DNA tests taken by the same person can result in “slightly different processing” due to small differences of “chemical nature” and how algorithms are processed.
In other words, not all tests will yield the same results because of their methodology. It’s unclear why the difference exists,
but the lower accuracy when compared to the two largest DNA testing services makes MyHeritage a less appealing option. My mother happened to also take the MyHeritage DNA test, and her results listed multiple ethnicities with high percentages that never registered in my profile.
