Not as much warning this time around, but we knew it was coming. It is official, eHarmony in Canada and the US are having a free communication weekend starting today, Thursday July 2nd, until Sunday, July 5th, 2009.

For those of you who haven't heard of eHarmony's free weekends, it means most features of the dating site are free to use for new and existing members. This includes not only getting to review your matches, you can communicate with them as well. The one thing not included is, Fast Tracking the communication process.

This is Free Communication Weekend number 18 for eHarmony. The last one was held on the Memorial Day weekend in May.

Read our review of eHarmony for more information on this popular online matchmaking service.

Starting tomorrow, Thursday, March 26 and until Sunday, March 29, 2009, eHarmony is planning a Free Communication Weekend. This means trial members of eHarmony will not only be able to review their matches for free but communicate with them as well. The Guided Communication process is included in the free weekend but FastTrack communication is not. The major difference between the two types is, FastTrack allows email communication right away, while Guided Communication has four stages of questions and answers before you can communicate with directly with email.

This is Free Communication Weekend number 16 for eHarmony. Usually these free weekends go from Friday to Monday but, eHarmony has switched things up a bit and has this free weekend starting Thursday and ending Sunday. They also usually do free communication weekends only on holidays, so the news of this one came as a bit of surprise.

Read our eHarmony review for more information on this matchmaking dating site. Remember, eHarmony is very popular because of their detailed profile and automated matching system. If you are looking for a dating site that allows you to search for your own matches, then eHarmony may not be the service for you.

Recipient of Gold Match.com

Recipient of Silver eHarmony

Recipient of Bronze Yahoo! Personals

We closed the 2008 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll yesterday (Jan. 12) with a total of 600 votes from the public. This is almost 150 more votes than last year's Single's Choice Awards which ran roughly the same amount of time. I'm glad to see user participation up this year for our most important award. We started the 2008 poll in October, for 2009 we plan to start it in September as we did for 2007. This way we hope to get the Awards Summary finished by the end of the year instead of January like this year.

We did two things different this year. First we included 10 dating sites instead of 8 as with the year before. Second, we are giving the top 3 dating sites an award, Gold for first place, Silver for second and Bronze for third. We decided to do this since there is not a huge percentage difference between first and second place and it also gives an idea to the public what other dating sites singles also consider as a good choice to join.

The Gold 2008 Singles's Choice Award recipient is Match.com. This is the second year in a row that they are the winner of this award and it is also the second award for them this year as well. Match.com also won our Editor's Top Pick - Overall Award. Of the 600 votes received, Match.com got 160 votes which is over a quarter of all the votes. Smart advertising, a good designed interface and communication tools makes this site a popular choice for singles everywhere.

The recipient of the Silver Singles's Choice Award for 2007 is eHarmony. This dating site, which is famous for its automated matching system, won the award this year for the Editor's Top Pick - Match System Award. eHarmony has 132 votes which is 22 percent of the total vote and just 4.67 percent less votes than Match.com.

Finally, the Bronze 2008 Singles's Choice Award recipient is Yahoo! Personals. This is our first award for Yahoo. They had 12.83 percent of the total vote, less than half of what Match.com received but 5 percent more than 4th place which received only 7.83 percent of the vote. With the Yahoo name behind this dating service, a well designed service and a new 6 month guarantee this year, makes this online dating site our readers 3rd choice.

This year's standings for the Single's Choice award for all dating sites in the poll are (click the dating site name to read our full review):

1. Match.com
2. eHarmony
3. Yahoo! Personals
4. SinglesNet.com
5. FriendFinder.com
6. Lavalife
7. PerfectMatch.com
8. True.com
9. Chemistry
10. Date.com

We received 30 percent more votes this year for the Single's Choice Award and we would like to thank everyone for your participation.

Last year we started the 2007 Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards in late August and it was a resounding success. This year we hope to continue the momentum with the 2008 Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards! This annual event attempts to find the best online dating site for the current year in several dating categories. Our visitors can also participate in this selection process.

First up is the poll for the Single's Choice Award. This award is our top award and is voted on by you. This year you can select from 10 of the most popular dating sites on the internet today. Please cast your vote:

For this year's Editor's Top Picks Awards we plan on keeping the same dating award categories as 2007. They are:

• Top Pick - Over All
• Top Pick - Innovative
• Top Pick - Match System
• Top Pick - Christian
• Top Pick - Senior
• Top Pick - Canadian
• Top Pick - Wealthy
• Top Pick - Sexy

• Is the site popular with online daters?
• Would I recommend this dating site over others within the category?
• Are most members happy with the dating service?
• Is the dating site striving to offer the best user experience?
• Are new features being explored and is the dating site being updated to take advantage of new technologies?

This year's dating awards are expected to wrap up by late November. Take a look at last year's winners with our Summary of the 2007 Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards.

Related items: Poll - 2008 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award.

I logged into Yahoo! Personals the other day to note any changes and notice a few surprises with regards to the memberships. The first is, Yahoo has gone from 3 membership levels down to 2. Their Premier Membership has been removed and the remaining membership pricing will be just a dollar more, when compared to the old casual membership. Subscription prices are now between $13.99 to $25.99 per month depending on the length of the membership. The old Premier prices for a month ranged from $20.83 to $39.95. The features that where part of the Premier subscription level (which dealt with searching and rating matches) have either been removed or rolled into the existing paid memberships. The free membership as far as I can tell has remained unchanged.

The major surprise is Yahoo! Personals has a guarantee now. If you purchase a 6 month membership Yahoo will make you a 6-Month Promise. If you do not find someone special by the end of your subscription, they will give you another six months for free. You must have a approved searchable profile with a photo and must communicate with at least 5 different members each month to be eligible. Another nice touch is they will email your status each month to help you keep track of your eligibility.

It appears that the 6-month promise started in May, 2008. I am unsure why Yahoo did not promote this at all since few dating services actually offer a guarantee. If promoted they would have brought in more members and received some free publicity from dating blogs such as this one. Sometimes you have to wonder about large companies marking departments, it doesn't take much to release a press release.

Yahoo Personals promise is very similar to Match.com "Make Love Happen Guarantee". In fact it is virtually the same except for a few small details. I guess they figured if it works for Match, it will work for Yahoo.

For more information on Yahoo! Personals, please read our review.