Dating Services

With eHarmony appearing to be close to officially launching their UK dating site there has been an unusually high number of articles on the internet about the dating service. Just watch some of the statistics being presented, some are not completely accurate. In our last story we took a look at this Times Online article. In it they reported:

A poll carried out by Harris Interactive reports that last year eHarmony was the force behind 236 marriages per day. That is more than 80,000 a year. Indeed, the company claims to bring about more than 2 per cent of all marriages in the United States.

This is not correct. eHarmony has reported recently that they are responsible on average for 118 marriages a day. This then means that 236 eHarmony members get married everyday (2 people = 1 marriage). Likewise, according to eHarmony 86,102 eHarmony users have been married in the year ending March 2007. This works out to 43,051 marriages in a year, not the over 80,000 in which the Times article suggests. The last point of the quote is also inaccurate. eHarmony claims to be responsible for 2.57% of marriages in the United States of people between the ages of 20 and 54, and who use the internet. They do not claim over 2% of all marriages in the US. Of the 2.2 million people married in 2007 (from the US Census), only 1,675,172 of these marriages fall within eHarmony's parameters.

For the complete statistic read, How eHarmony Concluded, 236 Members get Married Everyday and for more general online dating statistics visit our Statistics and Facts page.

The UK's Times Online posted an article today about online dating in the United Kingdom. While it talks about a few of the popular sites briefly, the main topic of the story is eHarmony's new website with a matching system designed just for the United Kingdom. Launched in July of this year (see story), eHarmony jumped started their membership base by offering 90 day memberships for free. This offer is now over but anyone curious in eHarmony UK can still signup for a 7 day free membership. eHarmony UK does standout from other US dating sites that have moved into the European market. The reason for this is, they have worked with local established research institutes (in this case, Oxford University) to modify their dating site and matching algorithm to make it apply more specifically to relationships in the United Kingdom.

The article also has some price comparisons for one month memberships:

• Dating Direct charges £25 for a single month. Read our Dating Direct Review for more information.
• eHarmony costs £33.95 for one month. We currently do not have a review that has looked at eHarmony's UK site but you could try our eHarmony Review that is for the US.
• Match.com charges £22 for a month. Read our Match.com UK Review for further details.

For the full story visit the Times Online UK and to find out more about this matchmaking service read some eHarmony Reviews.

Since 2000 eHarmony has produced more than 1 Billion automated matches for its members. With eHarmony's detailed profiles and strict criteria for matching singles, combined with their large membership base, this is a huge success for them.

To see how this fact was established using eHarmony's match ID, visit the Unofficial eHarmony Blog. For more information about this popular online dating service read our eHarmony Review.

We found this PDF file on eHarmony called eHarmony | Harris Interactive 2007 Marriage Metrics Number of eHarmony Marriages, which explains the facts behind their findings in which 236 eHarmony users get married every day. Of all the popular dating sites on the web today eHarmony is definitely one of the more trusted dating sites. By releasing the facts behind their claims, it helps improve eHarmony's creditability even more.

To find out more about eHarmony, please read our review.

Bill Tancer of Hitwise released a book recently called "Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters". For those of you who don't know Hitwise monitors the internet and compiles anonymous statistics for clients on how often web sites are visited, how they are found and the demographics of the person doing the surfing. There are many companies that do this type of work with Compete.com and QuantCast.com being some of the other popular ones. These 3 statistic sites of course usually don't see eye to eye and the data they release every month never fully matches. What it does though when you compare the statistics is give you a general idea on how websites you are interested in are performing.

One of the topics the book covers is online dating. Of the top 10 dating sites it lists most of the Male to Female ratios hover around the 50 percentile mark with the most notable exceptions being the gay dating sites. eHarmony also has a much more uneven Male to Female ratio of 38% to 62%. What I was surprised at is the average age range of eHarmony visitors. Bill pegged it at 25 to 34 years of age. I had thought eHarmony members tended to be older than this. Match.com members average age according to Bill is between 35 and 44 which I would see as being more reasonable for eHarmony. eHarmony also appeared 7th on the list behind such dating services as Adam4Adam and DateHookUp. While these are popular dating sites, in my view and research eHarmony receives many more visitors. With this ranking issue found with his online dating facts, it puts into question the rest of the statistics.

Now QuantCast monitors eHarmony directly through a business agreement, you can trust their statistics for this site much more. Bill's book and Quantcast do pretty much agree on the gender ratios and age ranges for eHarmony. For the month of August 37% of the visitors where male (which makes 63% female) and 40% of the visitors where between the ages of 18 to 34. 38% of visitors fell in the age range of 35 to 49 and 20% were over 50.

QuantCast also had another stat which was interesting. 16% of visitors used eHarmony through a business internet connection. With the way companies monitor their internet connections these days, I wouldn't be doing this.

eHarmony announced today that they have partnered with AOL Personals (which is in BETA). They will be offering their matchmaking services to American Online visitors along with dating and relationship advice through the “eHarmony Boutique”. The interesting thing here is AOL already has a partnership with Match.com. On the AOL Personals homepage both dating services share the same space. AOL tells visitors to use the Search for a Match option (which is powered by Match.com) to give you complete control over your searches and to use the Get Matched option (which is powered by eHarmony) to receive matches to compatible singles. I would be surprised if Match.com was happy about this new eHarmony partnership. They already have a sister site called Chemistry.com which competes with eHarmony directly.