Statistics

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.

If you missed installment one of this article series on OKCupid’s report on age-based dating practices, click here to read OKCupids Asks: Why Aren’t Men Into Older Women?

According to OKCupid, men are pretty much missing the boat when it comes to the women available in the dating pool. Why? Because they skew their age preferences toward women significantly younger and pay little attention to those even marginally older. Men would do much better, they say, at meeting their goals for a healthy, happy relationship if they didn’t rule out the “older woman.” OKCupid used a sample set of 100,000 female users in their study and narrowed down the case for older women into three key areas: sexuality, attitude and looks.

It’s incredible what OKCupid’s user data revealed about sexual preferences for the female population. The original post has a really cool “heat map” that shows, by sliding a slider from age 18 to 40, how female users’ sexual preferences change with age. The younger lean towards preferring sex once per week, while that preference distinctly changes as you approach and move beyond women in their 30s. (Guys – take note. No more complaints about lacking an active sex life if you’re ruling out women who may be a bit older than you!)

Older women also have healthier perspectives on sexual issues like contraception and STD testing according to the post, with older women feeling more strongly about protected sex and frequent STD testing. In a nutshell, younger females seem to want less frequent sex, do it unprotected and are less interested in regular STD testing. (Guys?)

The overall attitude of the older woman is better adjusted as well, according to OKCupid. Their member profile data indicated that women in their 40s have significantly high levels of self-confidence, are happier with their lives overall and feel that the best days of their lives are ahead of them. Now that’s a refreshing outlook, isn’t it? If you’re worried about getting marched to the altar, however, fear no more. 96% of women in their 40s are content being in a relationship that may not end in marriage, but only 62% of 18-year-old women can say the same.

The final area of comparison: looks. OKCupid cites a misconception that women become less attractive as they get older. They also rule-out those who are in long-term relationships or already married and may tend to pay less attention to their appearances. They concluded: women are equally as attractive, regardless of age. Want a real shocker? Check out the fabulous photos of actual OKCupid users at the end of the article. We think you’ll have a hard time guessing who’s the “older woman!”

Bottom line for the guys: maybe you want to take another look at your age preferences in your online dating profile. If you’re willing to pass up a great sex life with an attractive woman with a killer sense of self-confidence, well – your loss! But they’re out there and waiting – all you have to do is click. For more information on the dating site, check out our review of OkCupid.

Popular online dating website OKCupid recently dug into its member base and asked the question: why are men not seeking women of their equal age or older? According to their post-Valentine’s Day blog entry, the typical user on their site aged 22-30 states age preferences for female matches to be younger. Now, that was worth a deeper look by their staff and what they found might surprise you.

OKCupid’s user base peaks at about 7 million users aged 24 and drops significantly as age increases. This could simply be a factor of OKCupid having developed into an online dating site that caters to a younger crowd or that membership over age 30 decreases because people in those age brackets are in relationships/married. So herein lies the question that OKCupid set out to answer: why are older women on the site having a more difficult time matching-up than their male counterparts?

It all comes down to age preferences stated in the male user’s online dating profile, they say.

While the male to female user ratio on OKCupid stays fairly balanced across the age brackets, men consistently indicate in their user profiles that they prefer dating younger women. While they do indicate that they are open to older women, it’s with much narrower limits. For example: OKCupid’s average 31-year-old male user sets his age range preference for women as 22 to 35 – a full nine years younger but a mere 4 years older. And here’s the shocker – as male age increases, age preferences toward younger women skew even further. They give the example of their median 42-year-old male user typically looking for women up to fifteen years younger but only three years their senior.

Interestingly enough, when OKCupid flipped the coin, they found women to be much more tolerant of age ranges. Women on the site typically message those younger and older than themselves with equal frequency. They also become more open to dating older men after age 29 according to messaging practices tracked on the site.

So with the skew in view, where does that leave men and women in the quest to find a match when age enters the equation? Check out the second installment of this article: OKCupid Says Men Are Looking for Older Women and Just Don’t Know It. For more information on the dating site, check out our review of OkCupid.

A yet to be released study from a Duke University researcher, analyzed 22,000 online daters and confirmed what the rest of us already know. Men prefer thin women and, women prefer tall financially secure men. I think what will be interesting about this study is the little details. Some reported examples of this in the study include, men prefer women with a body mass index of 18 or 19. This is on the very thin side since a women who is 5' 6" would need to weight about 115 pounds (I think women can blame the runway models for this). For the men, on average a guy who is 5' 9" needs to make $30,000 more than a man who is 5'10", just to be as successful with online dating.

We will report more interesting facts on this online dating study when it is released.

The BBC World Service commissioned a survey which polled about 11,000 internet users from 19 different countries. The results of the study concluded that 30 percent of people who use the internet feel that the online world is a good place to find a partner. Education played a factor in this survey as well. For those people who have completed high school, 28 percent believed that dating sites worked. When compared to adults who did not finish high school, a higher percentage, 36 to be exact, thought going online was a good place to find a date.

When looking at internet users from different countries, Pakistan came in at the highest at 60 percent, followed by India at 59 percent. British participants in the survey came in at 28 percent. This was followed closely by the French at 27 percent. Americans were fairly low at 21 percent.

The overall result from this survey is fairly close to a similar statistic from another story that roughly 30 to 40 million singles in the United States use online dating sites or social networks to look for love. This is about 1/3 of single Americans or 33 percent.

For more on this survey, read the eCommerce Journal.

Jennifer Viegas of Discovery News took a look at online dating recently and concluded that despite its flaws, dating sites are a useful tool. In the 15 years that online dating sites have been around (at least that was when Match.com started back in 1995) the success of online dating still remains somewhat questionable according to her. Singles have to become educated on how to use dating sites, what to look for, how to spot scammers and what websites to use, only then does it then become a useful tool.

The first thing online daters have to realize is, most singles tell a few white lies on their dating profiles. For the most part, there is no malice in this, when people mislead about something on their profile, it is usually because they feel a little inadequate. For example, it was found in a recent study about dating profiles at Michigan State University that 52.6 percent of men lied about their height, while 39 percent of women did. Women tended to fib more about their weight, 64.1 percent in fact. Age is also another attribute people lied about (24.3 percent of men and 13.1 percent of women).

Dating sites also tend to attract people who are married. While not as bad as before, since there are dating sites like AshleyMadison.com who deal with this dating niche, it can still be a problem, especially on the free dating sites. In one study, 83 percent of the participants felt that using online dating sites for a fling was not cheating on their partner as they had no plans to continue the relationship.

As far as scammers are concerned, members of dating sites need to watch out for those profiles of people with model like photos. This combined with poor spelling and grammar usually is an indication of someone who is not, who they say they are. Another huge give away of a scammer is, if they ask for money. They will use any sob story they can think of. If you haven't met the person in real life and met a few of their friends or family, I would instantly break off conversation with someone who asked for money. If you are unsure of a scammer another easy way to spot them is to ask them more about the city they live in. Usually scammers don't live in the city they say they are from and it is pretty easy to trip them up by asking them to list a few of their favorite spots to eat or something similar.

For more on the story, read Discovery News.