Match Group

With OKCupid's recent media buzz over their statistic filled blog posts, it seems to have garnered them some more attention and not all of it is good. One college aged woman wrote about her experience on OKCupid and said:

Stupid, stupid Cupid. This addictive, pixelated piece of crap has robbed too much of my time; time spent reading incoherent, innuendo-ridden messages ...

She wrapped up her post by stating "Don't join OKCupid.com". Her main complaint seems to be that all the guys on the dating site just want to have sex.

Was she being fair to OKCupid? I don't think so. For one thing, I think her expectations were off, especially because of the signals she was sending out. For example, after joining OKCupid and creating a profile she states:

Then, we moved on to uploading pictures. These pictures had to be HOT. We’re talking steamy.

Just like at a club or bar if you dress hot and steamy you're going to attract a certain type of guy, online dating is no different. I'm not saying your profile photo shouldn't be attractive or even a little sexy; it's just if you dial it up too much you should realize the type of guys you are going to attract, the ones looking for a one night stand and not necessary a relationship.

To find out further details about this dating site, read our review of OKCupid.

Recipient
Plentyoffish.com

After careful review, we have determined that Plentyoffish.com is the winner of the Editor's Top Pick - Free Award. This service is by far the largest of the free dating sites on the internet. While PlentyofFish.com (POF) does offer a paid component now, most features of the dating site continue to be free, including all communication between members.

So why did we decide on POF? The answer is easy, members! This dating site has many active users; no other free dating site even comes close. Part of the reason why PlentyofFish.com is so popular is they offer all the tools needed for online dating. When user's signup you get to fill out a typical profile for yourself that contains most attributes people consider when dating someone. When searching for singles comes into play you will have a number of options available to you, from the basic search which is quick and easy, to the advance search which allows you to search on any attribute in a profile. With members you like, communication is a breeze with the built in and easy to use private messaging system. Privacy and safety is also important on POF, for example you can specify the types of members you do not want contacting you.

PlentyofFish.com also has a few other free relationship services for members. You can take the Relationship Chemistry Predictor which contains 48 questions about yourself and your personality. Once completed POF will then match you with other members based on the answers you have given. There is also a Relationship Needs Assessment which better helps you understand what you require in a relationship. Once you have taken the assessment you are given an action plan to help you discover if your potential partners will meet your needs.

If you are looking for a dating site which is free to use then PlentyofFish.com should be the first service on your list. Chances are they will have plenty of members actively seeking a relationship living in your area.

Read our review of Plentyoffish.com for more information about this online dating service or visit Plentyoffish.com directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: OkCupid.com.

It looks like the rumor was true (see Story), Match.com released a press release yesterday which confirm that they have made a deal to acquire the dating site Singlesnet.com. Financial terms of the deal have yet to be released but Match CEO Greg Blatt did state that Singlesnet will continue to be run largely as a standalone business. Adrian Ong of Match.com will be taking over the helm from the previous owner of Singlesnet, Quinn Lipin. Mr Lipin will still continue to work for Singlesnet.com as an executive.

Singlesnet was once the most visited dating site in the USA back in December 2008. Since then traffic has slowly declined with a major drop happening in February 2009 from 7 million unique visitors to just under 5 million.

Recipient
Match.com UK

The Editor's Top Pick - United Kingdom Award goes to the dating site, Match.com UK. This is the first year for an award specifically given to a United Kingdom dating service. We decided to offer one this year as our UK readership has increased substantially. Why is UK.Match.com the winner of this award? You can read below to find out.

First off, Match.com in the UK had a busy year in 2009. We saw a partnership deal between Meetic and IAC (who owns Match.com) which saw the handing over of the Match.com European operations to one of Europe's biggest dating service, Meetic. By consolidating services between the 2 companies, not only did the 2 companies save money, which could now be spent in other important areas, but overall customer service and satisfaction increased as well. Match.com UK also went in a new direction with marketing. They hired a new advertising agency named Mother, and have spent according to some estimates over £6m on advertising in the United Kingdom over the last year. There new ads are smart and have informed the public on what Match.com offers. This has resulted in an increase in quality traffic to the dating service. A prime indication of how well a dating service is doing, is by how many members they have.

Match.com also continues to research relationships and love, to see what attitudes, personality traits and expectations are compatible or not between people. This research is not only used to improve their matching tools, but to educate Match.com members as well. Visitors to the dating site can view their latest research study called "The LoveGeist Report 2009". The data in the report is the result of a study of over 16,000 people. Included with the report is an interactive map which allows you to view the summary results of the report by regions in Britain.

There are about 3 popular dating services in Britain and we feel the UK version of Match.com comes out on top. For singles who wish to meet the love of their life, there is no better spot to start than Match.com.

Read our review of Match.com UK for more information about this dating service or visit Match.com UK directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: DatingDirect.com.

I found an article which talks about the trouble with web traffic numbers. I have talked about this issue before but it is interesting to see it from the point for view of a large dating site like OkCupid. In January comScore reported that OKCupid had 735,000 unique visitors in January, 2010. This was an increase of about 200,000 from a year ago according to comScore. Sam Yagan, OKCupid chief executive stated that:

... comScore was significantly undercounting the site’s traffic.

For proof he gave the author of the article, Carl Bialik a Google Analytics report for OkCupid which showed almost 4.3 million unique visitors last month. This shows that comScore's estimate is off by 600 percent. All I can say is I am not surprised. Web traffic estimates from these types of traffic sites are usually way off the mark. For example our review site is vastly under estimated as well, in most cases over 4 times as much. The other statistic in which Sam Yagan mentioned was that during a normal day in February (Feb 18th I believe) they had 270,000 unique logins to their dating site. With almost a couple hundred thousand people logging in during a 24 hour period, this makes comScore's estimate of 735,000 unique visitors in a month seem laughably low.

Read more about this topic on the WSJ Blogs. To find out about this dating site, read our review of OKCupid.

The Catalyst Group released a 48 page document (see below) which outlines the experiences of 16 online daters of which 8 used Match.com and 8 used eHarmony. As stated in the report, the intention of the document "is to highlight broad themes and provide insights as to how these sites are used".

I found the report itself to be more of a comparison of how Match.com and eHarmony work. The bulk of the report tackles how each dating site handles the online dating process. They broke it up into 3 phases, which are Identifying Matches, Reviewing Profiles, and Communication. The authors did include some information about what the users did and did not like for each site but there was no real comparison as to which site approach which phase better, and why (or how they could improve).

eHarmony nor Match.com participated in any way with the study. After reading it through thoroughly, I found it is an excellent source of information for those of you who wish to know how Match.com and eHarmony work and how their approaches to online dating differ. As mentioned in the limitations, the study sample is very small and may not represent the views of the overall population. But, what were the researchers' conclusions? Near the beginning of the Match.com and eHarmony Usability Study of Online Dating they list some general perceptions. The researches were told by the participants of the study that online dating sites come up short on their claims about matching. Most users had little confidence in the technology and the process behind the matchmaking. Despite all this, people use dating sites because they do offer a pool of potential matches for them to access when the more traditional ways of finding a date (bars, family, friends, etc...) do not work.

In the end the researchers concluded that eHarmony was preferred by singles who needed/wanted to be led every step of the way in the online dating process. This was especially helpful for those singles that lack self confidence in communicating with their matches. On the other hand, Match.com was seen as a "good compromise between the restrictions of eHarmony and the wild west of free sites".

For more on the story, read the WSJ Blogs. To find out more about these 2 dating sites you could also read our eHarmony review and Match.com review.