Beyond Skin Deep: The real top dating sites
Written by Max Freiert (contact - e-mail) -- December 28th, 2006 |
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To differentiate themselves from the competition, online dating services use “data” like the number of members, criteria used in matchmaking or (my personal favorite) the number of marriages “created.” But how do these sites really stack up in terms of traffic?
Looking at the number of November site visitors, Yahoo Personals and TRUE lead the industry, with about 2 times the volume of 3rd place Match.
But ranking online dating sites purely on visitor traffic is flawed; membership is a prerequisite to use the services, and member activity is the foundation of successful matchmaking. Looking at how members use a site gives a clearer picture of the online dating landscape, and changes these rankings dramatically.
The chart above shows overall member involvement (measured as the total number of unique times a member accessed the site). Since this is impacted by both the volume and activity level of members, member visits start to reveal actual engagement.
- Yahoo Personals grabbed the top rank on every measurement. This great overall performance shows a balance of both driving traffic to the service, and encouraging active participation.
- While TRUE placed 2nd in visitors, its 8th rank in member logins indicates that much of this traffic came from TRUE’s intense (and apparently misguided) advertising efforts on youth oriented social networking sites. In addition True members represented a mere 8% of total visitors, less than a quarter of the market average.
- Plentyoffish.com showed that free services can be successful; 9th in terms of visitors, the site leapt to 5th in member interaction. More importantly, it was one of 5 sites with more than 10 million member visits, putting it in a class with much higher trafficked sites and besting its next competitor by a multiple of 2x.
For this analysis, Msn dating, a division of Match.com, was aggregated into the Match.com calculations. eSpinthebottle.com and eCrush.com were also counted as one site.
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January 2nd, 2007 at 1:57 pm
I think match.com is ahead of yahoo personals. In my perception match.com has a greater number of features and searching capabilities. Also, now Dr. Phil is getting involved with Match.com, I think match.com would win the online date service poll.
See for yourself: http://todayspolls.googlepages.com/match_dating_poll
January 3rd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Craigslist actually has a lot of dating traffic and activity as well. Tough to measure independently since it’s buried in with their other usage, and they don’t monetize it. But it’s a factor in the market that needs to be taken into account by competitors. See http://blog.topix.net/archives/000095.html
January 4th, 2007 at 1:52 am
What about lavalife?
January 4th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Rich,
Great point about Craigslist. Dating services should certainly be aware of Craigslist personals, but the free service didn’t really have a place in this analysis. User interaction with tradition dating services and CL personals is vastly different.
For example, on Match.com you have to become a member to interact with the service, and during the process you set up a profile that people can search and learn about you from. At Craigslist, you not only don’t have to sign up to search through personal ads, you can reply to, and post personals without registering on the site. The entire process is very anonymous.
Dating sites have vastly more refined search communication and display features, which offer more than just responding to a vague ad, or searching within a defined city. In addition. Craigslist personal posts contain a large amount of spam, both from users and from other dating services, as everyone involved seeks to bump their post to the top of the list. Trying to compare this type of user interaction with that of a purebred dating site doesn’t really generate any hard conclusions.
Date-Tard,
On a global scale, I believe Lavalife has a much larger presence, but in the US, it doesn’t rank in the top ten in both total visitors, and Member logins. You can get total US traffic numbers using Compete Snapshot: http://snapshot.compete.com/lavalife.com
January 8th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Another intersting question is the coversion rate of each dating site.
tal,
http://copenda.blogspot.com/
January 9th, 2007 at 1:51 am
Lavalife, Alt, AdultFriendFinder, 4hsh.org, and so many other “adult” dating sites are far more active with paid members. I don’t think they fall into the same category but we need to at least mention them so the reader understands the “other” places people are going.
January 18th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Oh I wasn’t aware that lava wasn’t that big. Its pumped all the time in the media, so thought it was more than it really was. I just signed up for match.com and hope that works out well…
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:04 pm
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January 25th, 2007 at 2:48 am
By following these suggestions, an estate auction can be not only a place of great bargains but also enjoyment and fun. Listening to and watching others can also prove beneficial. More often than not, they will furnish you with clues about a great many items. The more you learn, the better your buying habits become and you learn more each time you go to an auction. Having worked a lot of sales in my time, I can tell you that an auction is a wonderful place to meet people, find good deals, make connections and learn a lot about buying, selling and collecting http://www.ubuysell.ca, here are some other great free sites.
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February 4th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I met my wife on Match.com in January 2003… Did a bunch of Internet dating before that (back to the mid 1990s). Now starting a social networking website called BuzzPal - The World Is Your Party (www.buzzpal.com). That site will have a sister site specifically for dating called BuzzLove (www.buzzlove.com). Should be launched this summer. Check ‘em out! Cheers!
-chrisco
February 13th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
For anyone interested in the general topic of online dating, there is a new URL that describes a great new safety tool for those who make use (or who are contemplating such) of any of the
online dating sites, of which there must now be thousands available on the Internet. Only a few of the most major such sites offer any type of psychological testing and/or background
informational searches to be accomplished on the users of the sites. Compatibility testing and matching really does not help filter out those who are attempting to make use of the sites
based upon scamming, criminal, or otherwise harmful motivations. Reviews of the only couple sites that offer users some degree of criminal background history checking and unfortunately
these checks have been reviewed as being too limited in scope; generally only limited to the police records in a single State or else useless as the focused upon individual is making use of
an alias or pseudo name in his/her communications with the site.
Just very recently, a new approach has been developed that addresses this very problem. A psychologist who has an extraordinary background in psychological test development, as well
as in security related integrity or honesty testing has developed this new tool. This psychologist has developed a rather short/quick psychological test, based upon well-established and
sound psychological test construction logic, that is designed to assess almost a dozen problem areas that are highly associated with personal integrity/honesty. This 72-item, multiple-choice
test, the Personal Security Standards Psychological Questionnaire (PSSPQ), has recently gone through a rather thorough testing when used to screen or otherwise evaluate the general
integrity of persons who were attempting to contact potential ‘dates’ through the services offered by online dating sites. The PSSPQ has recently been made commercially
available to users of online dating sites. An extremely complete (and quite lengthy) description of the PSSPQ when used in the online dating arena for individual evaluation purposes is
available on: http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/psspqdatingtest.htm . On this PSSPQ website, many helpful links are provided that greatly aid a reader in understanding and
evaluating the PSSPQ, its development, and its developer, as well as the many dangers that face anyone making use of the online dating sites.
March 25th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
i have found flingbaby.com to be a pretty reputable adult dating site.
March 28th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Allhookup.com is the best place to get laid. I met my new bf there!
April 5th, 2007 at 7:49 am
I think adult dating sites have a better conversion rate than regular dating sites.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Hey whats up my name is sarah and i have tried many of these online dating sites..much of them were a complete let down..i would recomend http://golovelife.com for anyone trying to hook up
July 29th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
I think that free online dating sites will far surpass the paid ones. Why pay 20 plus dollars monthly when you don’t have to.
The quality of the paid ones might be slightly better but the free ones are catching on and are making money on advertising dollars.
Allsinglesmeet.com is a new free online dating site that I found has many great features. There is instant messaging and webchat. I found it easy to use and see it has a fairly large Florida base which is where I am from.
Time will tell, but I think free online dating is going to kill the expensive dating sites!
August 29th, 2007 at 7:42 am
re gonna stop by ma page plz rate me, unless u r a hater in which case move on!!! sorry if i don’t
get back to ya right away, i get so many pm’s etc. thnx for all the nice compliments, and to all you sleazy guys who say they wanna f**k me,
get a life and start considering why u don’t have a girl in your life!!!!
October 5th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
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October 26th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
cnadelr
November 17th, 2007 at 5:36 am
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January 6th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
I have used most of these personals over the past 2 years and can say that while there are bogus profiles in most of them, Yahoo Personals has by far the MOST fake profiles; those coming from Nigeria and Russia. Yahoo seems to tolerate it to boost their rating.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Check out this new mobile-dating site: http://www.meetmoi.com
April 8th, 2008 at 7:31 am
We are new free dating site but have many features.
http://www.dateicon.com
June 27th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I can tell you that the biggest struggle we have is keeping scammers off of our site. Fake profiles will kill a site faster than anything, and, in fact, one of the reasons we started SwinglesOnline.com was because of the huge numbers of fake profiles on many adult dating sites. In our experience, AFF was the absolute worst offender.
Nigerian scams, webcam girls trying to snag a few new clients and what we call “tourists” people just coming by to try to see some pics - are a constant battle and we depend on our members to help us fight them.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I think SingleFling.com is the best free adult dating website to date. FREE everything…The Internet’s only singles social network is here and it’s hot. Filled with real single men and women looking for no-strings fun, dating and more at SingleFling.com.
August 9th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I just wrote a post about Match.com called: Match.com: Get Laid While Looking for Love. It seems that many men and women are getting a lot of action as they look for “the one.”
Check it out here: http://www.thisishowyoudoit.com/blog/matchcom-get-laid-while-looking-for-love/
What do you all think? It seems that many guys (and girls?) are treating these sites like online brothels.
Cheers,
Richard
December 8th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
thankz
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:27 am
Some of these comments seem like advertisers. You cannot verify everything online.
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:31 am
thankx
January 16th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
cool information that puts a positive spin on things. some review make every thing online sound scary. PlentyofFish has to be what you would recommend to folks. After all it’s free. There’s a lot less chance of ulterior motives. True struck me as having a limited number of people when I was in it.
March 12th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
very useful site, keep up the good work, thanks!
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March 14th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Keep working ,great job!
April 13th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
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April 14th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
thanks
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May 26th, 2009 at 5:18 am
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June 12th, 2009 at 8:07 am
I think YahooPersonals is the number one in 2009. That’s also my choice. I’ve tried Match und eHarmony, but didn’t like their aggressive mailing style…also they seem to have accounts listed that aren’t active anymore. By the way, this site helped me a lot - has a lot of useful user comments:
http://www.datingsitesranking.com
June 19th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
There’s an amazing new website called UstillUp - Late Night Encounters …or something like that. It’s intended for late night chat, dating and hooking up. It’s amazing. Tons of people and really great features like 3D chat, Video chat, IM, and VOIP phone. It’s actually better than all those mentioned, and it’s 100% free.