The distant cousins are a bit illusory. By the time you get three or four generations out there is so much DNA drop out that any effort to connect with DNA is probably not going to happen. See
http://www.isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statisticsWhat the AncestryDNA results do is indicate how much common DNA you and your match have. At fifth to eight cousin it's a very very small amount and it's highly unlikely that even if your remote trees connect that that is the source of your common DNA. It could easily be somewhere else and the DNA test isn't going to give you any more information than that you have a small bit of common DNA.
Basically, the remote cousins may give you some idea of where to aim your research but remote ancestry still relies on the old paper trail.