Building a family tree on MyHeritage is not just fun and easy — it’s incredibly rewarding. With technologies like Record Matching, Smart Matching™, and Instant Discoveries™, you can gain incredible insights on your ancestors and add lots of information to your tree in just a few minutes.
Here’s how to get started.
Starting from scratch
When you sign up for a MyHeritage account, you’ll be asked to enter your gender, name, email address, and year of birth, as well as the names of both of your parents. After clicking “Get started,” you’ll be prompted to enter the names and birth dates of each of your grandparents.
Once these 7 people — the “magic 7” — are in your tree, MyHeritage might already start making discoveries and suggestions for you. If a green Smart Match™ icon or a brown Record Match icon appears on a profile card, that means MyHeritage has found a potential match, which you can then review and confirm to extract new information. The more information you add, the more matches MyHeritage will find for you.
Since new records are constantly being added and new family trees are constantly being built on MyHeritage, new matches will likely become available after you’ve started building your family tree. You’ll receive periodic email notifications to let you know when MyHeritage has found new matches.
Uploading a GEDCOM
If you’ve already built a family tree using different genealogy software, you can upload your existing tree to MyHeritage as a GEDCOM file. This can be done during the signup process by clicking “Import tree (GEDCOM)” on the signup page, or once you already have an account by selecting “Import GEDCOM” under the “Family tree” tab in the navigation bar.
Instant Discoveries™
Sometimes, MyHeritage will find a Smart Match™ that can add a whole new branch to your tree, or photographs of people in your tree. This is called an Instant Discovery™. You can find Instant Discoveries™ under the Discoveries tab in the navigation bar on the site, and you’ll receive an email notification when MyHeritage has found an Instant Discovery™ for you. Once you’ve confirmed the match, you’ll be able to add multiple people to your family tree, or photographs of family members, in a single click.
In this way, Instant Discoveries™ can enrich your tree significantly with very little effort on your part!
How subscriptions boost your family history research
Building a tree, importing a GEDCOM, and receiving and reviewing Smart Matches™ and Record Matches is completely free on MyHeritage. You’ll also receive one free Instant Discovery™.
To confirm Smart Matches™ and extract the information in them to your tree, you’ll need a Premium, PremiumPlus, or Complete subscription. PremiumPlus and Complete subscribers also receive unlimited Instant Discoveries™.
To confirm Record Matches, view the original scans of the records, and extract the information in them to your tree, you’ll need a Data or Complete subscription.
