There are variations between human populations, so a SNP allele that is common in one geographical or ethnic group may be much rarer in another.  However, this pattern of variation is relatively rare; in a global sample of 67.3 million SNPs, the Human Genome Diversity Project "found no such private variants that are fixed in a given continent or major region. The highest frequencies are reached by a few tens of variants present at >70% (and a few thousands at >50%) in Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. By contrast, the highest frequency variants private to Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, or Central and South Asia reach just 10 to 30%."
Within a population, SNPs can be assigned a minor allele frequency—the lowest allele frequency at a locus that is observed in a particular population. This is simply the lesser of the two allele frequencies for single-nucleotide polymorphisms.
With this knowledge scientists have developed new methods in analyzing population structures in less studied species. By using pooling techniques the cost of the analysis is significantly lowered. These techniques are based on sequencing a population in a pooled sample instead of sequencing every individual within the population by itself. With new bioinformatics tools there is a possibility of investigating population structure, gene flow and gene migration by observing the allele frequencies within the entire population. With these protocols there is a possibility in combining the advantages of SNPs with micro satellite markers. However, there are information lost in the process such as linkage disequilibrium and zygosity information.