AND THE WINNER IS... (Comparing Admixture/Heritage Tests on Gedmatch)

Methodology:

• We ran exhaustive tests of several commercial and free DNA-testing labs and ethnicity calculators.  
• To test the sites, we used only individuals with well-documented, double confirmed, 100% known ancestry.  
• We tested multiple males from multiple lines to assure as much as humanly possible no extra-parental events (bastardy) occurred.  
• We even tested minor nobility with documented ties to geographic locales.  
• We used individuals who do not come from cities or places of cosmopolitanism (influx of foreigners).  
• We tested only people with all four grandparents from the same locale.  
• We tested multiple people from different countries in Europe.

As we've posted before, of the commercial labs, 23andme takes first prize, and Ancestry.com is the worst.  23andme provides the most conservative and accurate ethnic ancestry approximations.

We have also completed our testing of all of the ancestry composition tests available on GEDMATCH.  Below is a summary, the results, and the rankings.

• First of all, the specialty labs, Ethiohelix, Gedrosia DNA, puntDNAL, etc. do not even come close to being accurate, at least for individuals of European heritage.
• None of MDLP's tests passed our accuracy gauntlet and correctly called west European DNA.

1. The overall winner, and the clear winner of all the tools currently available on Gedmatch, is the Eurogenes K13 test.  It was pretty darn good at distinguishing DNA from various western European lands, for people of "purebred" ancestry.

2. Coming in second was Eurogenes EUtest K15 v2, which also had a pretty darn good record of accurate calls.

3. An honorable mention, and a close third, with accurate calls roughly as close to the second-place finisher, was Dodecad's K12b test.

• No other tests besides those three were even close to "often accurate."
• No tests, including those three, were much use for accurately calling the ancestry of European "mutts."  We found that the same tests that were accurate with individuals with 100% heritage from one country, were of limited value for serving as an oracle (predicting accurately) the ancestry of individuals of mixed European heritage.