The website gained significant media coverage in April 2018 after it was used by law enforcement to identify a suspect in the Golden State Killer case in California.

Other law-enforcement agencies started using GEDmatch for violent crimes, making it "the de facto DNA and genealogy database for all of law enforcement", according to The Atlantic's Sarah Zhang.

[3] GEDmatch was founded in 2010 by Curtis Rogers, a retired businessman, and John Olson, a transportation engineer,[4] in Lake Worth, Florida,[5] with its main purpose being to help "amateur and professional researchers and genealogists", including adoptees searching for birth parents.

[10] By May 2018, the GEDmatch database had 929,000 genetic profiles, with 7,300 users who paid $10 a month for Tier 1 premium membership,[13] which was used to pay for the $200,000/year server costs.

For new uploads, "opt in" is the default selection actively recommended for users,[16] shedding doubt on whether this could be truly "opt-in", which requires action in order to signal one's interest in what is being offered or proposed.

Under the new policy, investigators could not quietly upload a fake profile to a genealogy website, as some had done in hopes of finding a suspect's distant relatives, without first identifying themselves.

The policy also barred federal investigators from using a suspect's DNA profile to look for genes related to disease risks or psychological traits.

[23] In December 2018, police forces in the United States said that, with the help of GEDmatch and genetic genealogy, they had been able to find suspects in a total of 28 cold cases of murder and rape that year.

[26] White people are overrepresented on GEDmatch and are believed to be underrepresented in CODIS, the FBI's collection of DNA samples pulled from crime scenes, arrestees, and criminal suspects.

[27] On May 18, 2019, GEDmatch revised its privacy statement to users regarding the collection and use of genetic information, including the circumstances in which it may cooperate with law-enforcement use of its database.

[28][29] In cooperation with American law enforcement organizations, Parabon NanoLabs started uploading DNA evidence from crime scenes to GEDmatch in an attempt to identify perpetrators.

[46] Two genealogical researchers, Dr. Colleen M. Fitzpatrick and Margaret Press, started the DNA Doe Project in 2017 to identify unknown bodies using GEDmatch.

Their successes include the following: In 2018, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement set up a Genetic Genealogy Program to use GEDmatch to solve cold cases.

[7] After the arrest of the suspect in the Golden State Killer Case, co-founder Curtis Rogers said he spent weeks trying to figure out the ethics of the situation and legal options to pursue.

[68] In May 2019, GEDmatch began requiring people who had uploaded their DNA to its site to opt in to allow law-enforcement agencies to access their information.