Being part of a process of adoption, in any capacity, is always a complex experience. It can leave you with unanswered questions and the desire to know more. If you are the one who has been adopted, it is likely that at some point in your life you will have questions about your genetic roots, about the family you were originally born into, about what it would be like if you had the chance to meet them. If, however, you are the biological parent of a child who was adopted, you might like to know the kind of person they grew up to be, how their life turned out, and whether there is a chance to finally have a relationship with them. In either case it takes courage, heart and determination to embark on a journey to find your lost biological relatives. And when you only have a little information to start from, it may seem hopeless, and you may feel like giving up to avoid setting yourself up for a possible disappointment.

Please know that even if you are holding onto just a few isolated pieces of information - a name, a place, a year of adoption - or have nothing else to go on but the data locked up inside your genes, worry not. There is a good chance that Adopted.com will be able to make full use of what you have, to help you become reunited with your birth family. That is because you can choose one of our 3 simple yet proven effective search methods:

1. Profile Matching

While registering to our website you will be asked to fill in a profile with the various elements that you know about your situation. There are 10 specific factors on that profile, selected and refined over decades to represent information that almost everyone knows about the adoption. That profile will then be cross-referenced with over a million others by our complex algorithm and will reveal any full or partial matches. You will be shown the profiles that are a close match based on clusters of factors. This helps tease out the results that are super relevant to you, which may otherwise be overlooked. You can then take a look at those profiles and see if you feel that any of them might belong to your match. If you discover information which shows they might, you can contact them directly through the Adopted.com messaging system and find out more. This is a huge improvement over older systems where you received either a positive or negative match, that did not supply all of the results that are a good lead for reasons specific to your case. Now you get to read the profiles that are a close possible match, to decide for yourself which ones match your story.

2. Name Search

You may have a piece of information which is crucial to finding your biological family such as the name of a parent, child, or sibling, the name of the hospital where the adoptee was born, the agency they were adopted through, and more. In this case you can immediately use our NameSearch tool to run any such keywords not only through the Adopted.com database, but also through those of our partner platforms (e.g. Historical Records). This increases your chances of turning even seemingly little information into your ticket to becoming reunited with the relative(s) you are hoping to find.

Searching for your birth father and unsure where to start? Adopted.com is here to help simplify the process. Create a free profile today to find your birth father.

3. DNA Comparison

What if you have absolutely no information about the biological family member you are looking for? Worry not, because your connection to them is literally written in your genes. When you take a DNA test (using a reputable company such as MyHeritage, AncestryDNA, FamilyTree, or 23andMe) you will receive a data file of your DNA, which you can simply upload to the Adopted.com DNA comparison system, with the click of a button. Your DNA profile will be compared against those of our other members who have done the same, revealing those who share a sufficient number of genetic traits with you to indicate that you are related. This will not only allow you to quickly identify the biological relatives you were actively searching for, such as your parents or children, but might even reveal family members you never even knew about, such as siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts or uncles.

Of course, you can even use several of these methods at once, to increase your chances of reconnecting quickly.

An initially unsuccessful search does not mean a dead end

What if you have tried all of the available search methods and none of them was able to help you find the biological relatives you were looking for right at the outset? Do not despair, because there is still a good chance to be reunited with them in the future. Here’s how.

Once you have submitted your 10-factor search profile and DNA information into our system it will be automatically cross-referenced with information provided by newly joined members as they arrive, and be easily found by birth relatives who may be looking for you. Adopted.com is the world’s largest online Adoption Reunion Registry and it is continuously expanding, with hundreds of new members signing up every day. It is never too late to expect a notification of a new profile match or even a message or video from a biological relative who has just discovered our website, performed a simple search and found you. This is not only a theoretical possibility, it has a reality for many of our members, as our reunion stories show. So never give up hope, as you never know what good news tomorrow will bring.