Disclosure
How this site makes money
Ancestory is free to read, and it always will be. This page explains, plainly, how it is funded — because a site that recommends products should tell you exactly where its money comes from, and how we keep that money from bending what we say.
Affiliate links
Some outbound links on this site — chiefly to DNA-testing companies, on pages like our honest DNA-test comparison and the “take it further” prompt on each surname page — are (or will be) affiliate links. If you click one and go on to buy, the company pays us a small commission. It costs you nothing extra, and it does not change the price you pay.
The rules we hold ourselves to
- Recommendations are never for sale. Our DNA-test comparison is ordered by database size — a real, checkable fact — never by who pays us the most. If the best test for your question is the one that pays us nothing, that is the one the page tells you to buy.
- The facts stay free and un-gated. The money lives only in the optional “next step”, never in the reference itself. We will never hide a surname’s meaning, a clan’s history, or a caveat behind a link or a paywall.
- We won’t soften the truth to sell. Everything we tell you a DNA test can’t do — that a “Scottish %” is an estimate, that no test proves descent from a chief — stays on the page, next to the buy button.
- Affiliate links are marked. They carry the standard
rel="sponsored"attribute, and pages that use them say so.
Other funding
We may, in future, show unobtrusive display advertising or link to other heritage-related products (books, records services, roots-tourism). If we do, the same rules apply, and this page will say so. We do not currently run ads, take sponsorship for editorial content, or accept payment to feature or rank anything.