(note: The FTDNA Big Tree is also called, by them, the Haplotree. But it is more accurately termed a "yDNA Phylogenetic tree of haplogroups". We can appreciate their shortened name but want to clarify the term.)

The FTDNA Big Tree started life from the collaboration with NGG and was mostly filled with deep test results available from there. Individual SNP testing, SNP Packs introduced later and the like helped expand the tree further and place people in it. But most still relied on the YCC / ISOGG tree to date,. With the introduction of the BigY Sequencing test we saw a real explosion in depth and size of the tree. And almost overnight, it caused other tree development and SNP analysis sites to be born. Much credit must continue to be given though to the original FTDNA haplogroup study projects and their many volunteers who painstakingly researched and discovered new haplogroups and identifying SNPs. And to the ISOGG academic tree maintained after YCC ceased activity; of which Alex Williamson's yTree grew out of to support. But let's get back to the current tree.

Fall 2018 saw the introduction of a public phylogenetic tree from FTDNA. Although a bit awkward in form, use and detail, it offered their tree in a public, linkable form to non-FTDNA-testers for the first time. Then, shortly after, we see the introduction of a new "Block" tree form, credited as copying Alex Williamson's yTree form, but going beyond in some areas. This block form is only available to BigY testers whereas their traditional, internal tree has been made publicly available to any yDNA tester or non-customers.

Before talking about the various presentations of the same internal tree, we really need to talk about the content of the tree itself. As a major plus, due to their major rework of the older BigY test over the past year, FamilyTreeDNA has become the largest and most "current" of the phylogenetic tree's available (in general). This is possible because they have the largest database of Sequencing Y Chromosome testers. And, very key, they reworked their old BigY test results from HG19 to the new HG38 reference model. As a result of the rework, they extracted many more genetic marker results. We measure the "size" of a tree by the number of branches and leaf nodes. That is, the number of haplogroups represented and named in the tree. By "most current", we mean it has the most leaf haplogroups that are more recently created in time (of humanity, not the tree). FTDNA's large number of testers combined with their new reference model analysis has allowed them to extract more genetic markers from more people to then compare and build a bigger tree. FTDNA also relaxed the rules used to create new haplogroups (or branches and leaf nodes). The only areas where other trees are deeper is because of bringing in outside results other than BigY. Often, from studies like the 1KGenome project or other test companies like Full Genomes and YSEQ. With this major rework of the past year, instead of trying to play catch up with their analysis to match other trees, they are now leap-frogging past most other trees. The biggest "other" trees in this case are yFull and FGC. There are additional, other ones, like Alex Williamson's yTree, that maybe are focused on a subset of the haplogroups.

With the introduction of the public tree, FTDNA are now making access to their tree without logging in as a potential major benefit for all. Why potential? See the minuses below. But having the tree available to all and reference-able (via a URL link to a specific haplogroup), one can now report on haplogroup work in surname studies more directly. Before, we would have to provide a screen capture of the internal tree available to those who yDNA tested. Or use one of the previously mentioned other trees.

The big minuses in FamilyTreeDNA's public and internal tree are in the overall usefulness to the individual tester. Both yFull and yTree identify the test kits existing in all the various haplogroups (that is, branch points). With that identification, you often are given a surname and declared country of origin. This is completely missing from the older, original private FamilyTreeDNA Big Tree and only vaguely and partially available in "summary" reports in their public tree. The public tree now provides a count of each declared country of origin at each branch point (of that haplogroup -and all- the sub-branching haplogroups below). And maybe a surname reference count. But these counts only include those people who have allowed their information to be publicly summarized and when 2 or larger. So one has no clue as to how many are really existing to create the tree. Or how many with the surname may really exist as single entries that are not reported. As it is, with the BigY private tree, you cannot even see your near matches (even in the same Haplogroup sometimes) due to their newly instituted match cut-off for BigY that is further exacerbated as they add new, novel SNPs with BigY-500 and beyond.

The private tree visible to testers is pretty complete and visible in full all at once. This compared to the old form BIgY matches page. Thus allowing one to move around to different nodes and see the amount of structure below. It is easy to search for a given haplogroup named by an SNP using browser features. They provide limited listing of the additional SNPs in that haplogroup though. We say limited because their list is often incomplete if existing at all; especially when compared to the other trees that have the same branch defined. One can capture and paste the major tree fragment (for example, R1) into a spreadsheet to get a rough capture of the tree to process further. The historical private tree has no indication of the number of testers, declared country of origin, nor surnames.

While the public tree tries to provide some summary of the surnames and declared country of origin (and maybe thus number of testers), it severely lacks usability in perusing the tree. This because you have to click each haplogroup branch individually to expand the single, next level below. And only that one additional level is expanded. It can take you ten minutes, with already knowing your path from the root to your leaf, to get down to your branch area of the tree. And then you only have that branch visible. Not necessarily the ones around it. So the tree is not easily perused, navigated, and captured for further analysis. Most importantly, you cannot trace your path down to that haplogroup; nor is it divulged. In our opinion, the public tree disclosure is eye candy like the ethnicity tests. Captures initial imagination but is almost useless for any real need.

Which brings us to the new "block" tree made available to BigY testers. Most of the visual, top-level plusses of Alex Williamsons yTree have been incorporated. The path down to the haplogroup displayed is shown across the top with clickable URL's to reach those upper blocks. So you can easily understand where you are and navigate up the tree further. Next, they use the yTree block format to display each sub-clade and give all the named SNPs that form that haplogroup at that node. Instead of providing the blocks for all the testers below each of these blocks though, they only report on the test kits of your matches. Which, for many who have no BigY matches, does not get you anything more. But they do have an added "variants" description which, if you hover over, also gives the number of BigY testers at that block and below. So we now start to see returned what we lost (in a major way) with the BigY-500 transition and the introduction of the new, restrictive limit of only showing your "closest" matches (those within 30 SNPs different from you). Included below each block is a summary of surnames and countries similar to what is being provided with the new public tree. But seemingly without some of the limitations as singular-count surnames appear. The BigY tree is less or more useful (depending on your viewpoint and need at the time) than Alex's in that only a single haplogroup and its immediate children are shown at a time. So a sense of the real depth of structure below a given haplogroup is not easily obtained as is available in Alex's tree. But, for very flat, and large structure areas of the tree, having all this detail forced on you in Alex's tree can lead to difficulty in viewing and understanding the tree. Would be nice if both tree's offered a parameter that can be adjusted and include different depths of the tree from the haplogroup base shown.