I was visiting the site this morning and all was normal and then just a couple of hours ago we were sent official word that Match.com is now the exclusive online dating site for Yahoo in North America. We had hints of this possibility back in May of 2009 when the CEO of IAC (owners of Match.com), Barry Diller mentioned that they were in talks with Yahoo about acquiring their personals service. Yahoo and Match are also no strangers to partnerships. The dating sites for Yahoo UK, Germany, Taiwan are all partnerships with Match.com in Europe. Granted the Match.com European Operations were bought by Meetic last year but these partnership deals were in place long before the sale. It also looks like the partnership with eHarmony that Yahoo Australia had is over with Match.com taking the helm.

For current members of Yahoo! Personals, you will be experiencing a transition period. You have 3 options to choose from:

1. You can continue to use Yahoo! Personals until July 21, 2010. This is when the dating site will close permanently.
2. You can cancel your Yahoo! Personals account and receive a prorated refund for the amount of your unused Yahoo! Personals subscription.
3. Have your subscription transferred from Yahoo to Match.com on Yahoo.

I don't see many members choosing option 1 unless they are currently in communication with a Yahoo Personals member with whom they do not have other contact information for. In the next few weeks the pool of daters will become smaller and smaller as current subscribers migrate over to Match.com on Yahoo. Not surprisingly Yahoo! Personals has also stopped accepting new members (they actually stopped May 19th).

PaidContent mentions that Match.com had 5 million unique visitors in January while Yahoo! Personals had 4 million. The recently acquire SinglesNet by Match.com had 3 million visitors. This means in the first half of 2010 Match.com has affectively increased their traffic to dating properties they own by two thirds. I wonder if they plan to keep SinglesNet as a standalone dating site or will they be migrating those members as well?

For more information about this dating site, you can read our Match.com review.