At any rate, I felt like it was time to give my review of Match.com. I’ll admit, I have a bias for the service since I had success with it, but I would argue I have a favorable bias for a good reason!

I know it’s odd to have a wrap-up of a service at the beginning of a review but I’m the kind of guy who sometimes just wants the overview so I’m starting with those thoughts for other people like me! Plus, I feel like most of the dating site reviews out there skimp on the details so I’m going to make this review as comprehensive as possible (so it’s going to be loooong and not everyone will want to read it all).

The Quick Review of Match.com

To me, Match.com is an excellent dating service and it happens to be my personal favorite, in part because it’s a good service but also in part because I met my wife there. If I had to simplify what makes Match.com great it would come down to three points:

1. There are tons of people using Match.com which provides lots of opportunity
2. Match.com provides dozens of great features to help you connect with these people
3. And finally Match.com delivers its service in a very polished manner with a lot of care and attention to detail

The Good
The large population of users on Match.com is obviously a draw but without the right features it doesn’t do you much good (there are popular services that I feel proves this point). And as far as features go, to me Match.com leads the pack when it comes to different ways to find or communicate with people.

I also feel that Match.com wants to deliver a great experience. As someone who has been discussing dating services for several years, Match.com is one of the few services that surprises me with new features and great ideas on a regular basis. It is unfortunate that some of these features have an extra cost but even if you don’t spend to get those extra features, Match.com will still be providing you more ways and more opportunities to communicate than other services like it.

In addition to this, the number of ways that Match.com provides you to find other singles is very good. The searching allows you to search on any area that can be completed in a profile but many of the features actually remove the need to do much of the searching.

The Bad
I don’t see Match.com as a perfect dating service. I do wish they put some effort into helping train new online daters on some basic do’s and don’ts when creating their profiles and communicating.

Ten or fifteen videos walking their users through some of the trickier areas of online dating would go a long way in my opinion. I feel like if they integrated this type of thing into the sign-up process and became known as the company that cares and wants to see their customers be successful, it would go a long way for both their clients and their continued success.

There are a lot of people out there writing bad reviews of Match.com because they don’t realize they are making mistakes in how they communicate and instead see it as the dating service’s fault…and if I were Match.com, I would want to address that. Match does offer a profile writing but I think that misses the point a bit.

Also, I think some areas of Match.com can be confusing. The six month guarantee is by no means a gimmee and takes a surprising amount of work to qualify for…with that surprise sometimes coming too late for the online dater to do anything about it. Also, little details like the auto-login feature that can create totally unexpected relationship turmoil shouldn’t exist. Basically, a little more information in a few areas could go a long way.

Overall Review Thoughts
All that being said, I feel that Match.com is well worth consideration to those looking into online dating. I didn’t just have success using Match.com, I also had a lot of fun using it (well, eventually). So if you’ve been on the fence about trying Match.com, I’d encourage you to be open to giving it a try.

At the end of the day, what we all really want is an online dating service that will enable us to have success finding a relationship. Everything else is just distractions and noise. In my opinion, Match.com is an excellent service at enabling singles to have success with online dating which is why I am quick to recommend it.

Try Match.com Today

Match.com Overview

Match.com is one of the oldest online dating services having been created back in 1995. Like all dating services, you’re provided with a profile to describe yourself and what you’re hoping to find in the person you hope to date. You then use this profile and other tools provided by Match.com to (hopefully) find that special someone.

I would contrast Match.com’s approach to a site like eHarmony where your matches are provided to you and communication is more controlled. I discuss more on this topic in my article on How Match.com Works.

The Pros: Things I Love About Match.com

I’m not going to discuss every detail I like on Match.com. Instead, I want to talk about a few of the features that make it an attractive option.

I Met My Wife There!
Okay…I guess that’s not a good measure for everyone but that is one big reason I recommend it!

Lots of Members
You might argue that the number of users a dating service has isn’t a feature. However, if we’re looking at this from the point-of-view of wanting a service that can provide you with the most opportunity to meet someone, then this is a huge plus for Match.com.

The size of the active user base translating to more opportunity may be obvious but it’s more than that. Having a huge number of users leads other people to want to use the service which leads even more people to want to try the service. What’s this mean to you? It means that you’ll see more new profiles being added to the service after you’ve signed up. Anyone who’s tried an online dating service only to see the same 20 people after a few weeks will know how important this is.

Having a huge user base isn’t enough to have a great dating service…but it sure does help!

Numerous Great Features
As I’ll discuss in detail later in this article, Match.com provides many different and unique features. However, a large number of features aren’t much use if they don’t help you reach the goal of meeting other singles. My opinion is that Match.com does a good job of providing features that meet this goal. Obviously some features are better than others but overall I feel like the necessary tools to have success are provided.

Reasonable Pricing
Finally, I think the price of Match.com is quite competitive. I imagine some people new to online dating are caught off guard when they discover the price. However, having used many services myself and discussed even more over the last few years, I can say that I feel that Match.com delivers a lot of value for the price.

You can see this article for more of my thoughts on Match.com’s pricing and you may also want to see my thoughts on eHarmony pricing to see another popular dating service to compare Match.com to.

Match.com also offers a 20% discount and a 7-day free trial, both of which are nice perks if you’re on the fence regarding giving the service a try.

The Cons: What Could Be Improved?

Most cons aren’t necessarily with the service itself but areas around the service or areas that could be handled better. As with the Pros I listed, I’m not going to list every single item that I think could be improved. Instead, I’ll keep it to a few broad areas where I think the most improvement could be made.

Overwhelming to Those New to Online Dating
Match.com is a very “open ended” service in that they don’t limit what you can do. In some ways, this is a huge benefit and could possibly be argued as a key benefit.

While in some ways it is a benefit, in other ways this can be a bit overwhelming to those new to online dating. As someone who runs a site giving online dating advice, I can tell you that many people are absolutely stumped when they first sign up for any dating service. Others make some mistakes that make finding success very difficult. Some of these mistakes would be simple to fix but the person has no idea their doing anything wrong.

With that in mind, I wish Match.com did a better job of acclimating singles to online dating. Why not have a crash course for online dating? This could even be sold as a feature of the service: sign up and we’ll walk you through a series of videos to help you make better decisions while dating online. I think a feature like this would also help many people become more comfortable with the idea of online dating.

And it’s not as if Match.com isn’t able to provide this help. Just look at all the statistics that OKCupid has provided based on how their users interact. I suspect Match.com could, with not too much effort, determine exactly what types of emails work best, what causes profiles to fall flat and so on.

They could then provide videos that would become available as you use the service. I would prefer this over a library of videos in some other location. In this way, when I open the screen to write an email for the first time, a video might be presented somewhere on the screen. I wouldn’t have to watch it but it’s available. This isn’t a new idea either: I’ve used many online services that provide help like this and it’s great.

What You’re Looking For vs. What You Find
This isn’t entirely Match.com’s fault but my experience with Match.com was that you couldn’t always trust the profiles. And I don’t mean lying in this case (although you run into that). What I mean is more along these lines:

• The be-everything-to-everyone people. They are vague or they try to be as acceptable as possible based on what they think others will think. Now any dating service can have members guilty of this but I feel like I saw this more on Match.com (again, I suspect because it is so open-ended and there’s not much guiding people through the process).
  
  
• What I think something means isn’t what you think something means. When I was dating online, I wanted to find a woman who shared my faith so I concentrated on those who listed themselves a Christian.

  What I found is that many people would label themselves Christian if they only attended a church when they were young but had no connection to their faith now. The dating service didn’t help much in identifying what I was really looking for (aside from when a woman would explicitly state her beliefs in her profile). This issue isn’t limited to religion and another example could be when someone says they’re “looking for a serious relationship”…surprisingly this can mean different things to different people as well.

  While I don’t see this as a problem limited to Match.com, there are services out there that allow you to put a weight to items such as relationship desires, religious/political affiliation and so on and I feel that Match could benefit if it had features like this.

These areas can be particularly annoying because often we only find out the truth on first dates. Even though we may have not been lied to, it can often feel that way.

Some Features Are Tricky
There are some features or offers that I feel Match.com could handle better. I’m really aware of two big offenders. While these two features aren’t prominent on the site, when they do cause problems they can cause people to become passionate in their anger (based on my experience talking with readers).

First, the six month guarantee can be very difficult to qualify for and it has created a lot of anger among some singles when they try to jump through all the hoops of getting six months free only to be denied getting this on a technicality. I won’t dive into this too far here but I have wrote about this extensively in my article on the difficulties of the Match.com 6 month guarantee.

Another example is one I’ve only heard of as a problem in the last few months: the auto login. This feature is on by default and while it is nice to automatically be logged in when visiting the website, there is a problem with it as well: if you open an email from Match.com, you’ll apparently show as being “Online” on the dating service itself.

Honestly, I’m not really sure how this could be happening but I’ve had several readers complain about this to me and they’ve been emphatic that they weren’t logging into their account. This issues goes against what I understand about how websites work…but I’m not an expert so I’m assuming this is really happening.

This is not a big deal for most of us but imagine that you’ve started dating someone and all of a sudden they see that you’ve recently been “online” at Match.com. Now, you haven’t really been online but prepare yourself for the possibility of a good fight anyway! I suspect many out there never really understand why they’re showing as online which only complicates the problem.

If you want to be extra safe and turn off this feature:

1. Click Account then Settings
2. Click Auto Sign In
3. Switch the setting to Off then click Go

Match.com Features Review

I wanted to discuss many of the major features at Match.com but I don’t want to just describe them. As I mentioned earlier, the point to a feature in an online dating site should be to provide you with a better opportunities to meet someone. These features may not even directly lead you to meeting someone: for example, if a feature helps keep people interested in the service and helps them to be persistent, that’s a great feature even if it rarely creates first dates on its own.

With that in mind, I’ll discuss each feature based on how well I think it can help singles get new first dates.

Searching

So searching doesn’t feel like a feature since it’s so common but I’ll touch on it here regardless. Searching is straight-forward: functionality to find people with specific features. Match.com actually provides very good searching options. Everything from searching for certain text, very specific qualities, likes and so on. Any of the fields filled during the profile creation process can be searched.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Excellent
If you’re looking for something in particular I’m confident that Match.com’s searching feature can help you do so. As I discussed in the Match.com by Mail feature, I really like that you can turn your customized searches into email alerts when new members are found that meet those requirements.

Instant Messaging

I like the Instant Messenger feature even though I didn’t use it much when I was dating online. I’m aware of some people who have success finding first dates only using the Instant Messenger.

At the risk of stating the obvious, you can only use the instant messenger with other singles who are currently online. Also, both people must be subscribers to have a conversation (it works just like email in this regard). That said, sometimes someone will show as online but you’ll not have the option to IM them: this is most likely because they’ve disable this feature.

When you send an instant message, there will be an alert on the other person’s screen which they can click and that will start the instant messenger session.

If you don’t like the idea of being contact this way, you can disable this feature: go to Account then Settings then Instant Messenger. On this screen you would want to set the Turn On/Off Instant Messaging setting to Off. You can still start IM sessions if you turn this off (turning this off just prevents others from starting sessions with you).

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Good
I think having the Instant Messenger is very helpful and many of those in their 20s seem more comfortable with this form of communication anyway. I think this is a great feature and I believe it does a good job in helping have success finding first dates.

Daily Matches

Your “Daily Matches” is Match.com’s way of trying to work with you to determine who it is you would like to date. This is one of those features that I suspect many people ignore when they shouldn’t be. Match.com is trying to do you a favor here and it’s best to help them!

The way this feature works is you’ll be sent a list of matches they think you might like. You then review each of these matches and indicate when there is a match that you like. Match.com will then send an email to this person letting him or her know that you found them interesting.

There is a trick to this: Match.com will only give you new matches once you’ve reviewed all of your current matches. Because of this, it’s best to keep up on these. Not only will keeping up on them get you more matches, Match.com claims that they will learn what you like as you review more of them.

Note: When you receive a match, they don’t know it. So if you’re not interested, don’t feel bad in saying so. They’ll not know.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Excellent
I really like this feature. First, because it keeps you active as a member of the service and gets you to review different people frequently. I also like that they will attempt to identify better matches based on your past reviewing. Not only that, some pressure is removed because all you have to do is say you like someone and Match.com sends an email for you.

All that being said, this feature wasn’t around when I was using Match.com so maybe I’m way off here. However, based on what I’ve read and seen, I think this is a great feature.

Who’s Viewed Me

This is one of those features that describe itself: “Who’s Viewed Me” shows you who viewed your profile…go figure! This is a very common feature on dating services today. At Match.com, you have to be paying member to see who has viewed you. Also, while you’re shown who has viewed you, you’re not shown how many times or how often they have viewed you. If you’ve ever found yourself re-reading a profile frequently, you’ll appreciate that they hide this information!

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Good
I think this can go either way: just because someone viewed your profile doesn’t mean they are interested. That being said, through running this site I know that a lot of conversations are started because one person viewed another person’s profile and this feature revealed that. With that in mind, I think this is a good and helpful feature.

Winks

Winks are a way to flirt. You click the button to wink, they’re alerted you winked at them. I generally recommend people avoid using them as emails are better but some women prefer to have the man do the pursuing and in those cases I think winks are fine. This is one of the few features that a non-paying member can use.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Fair
I’m not a fan of winks. When I was dating online, I thought they were fine. But over the years as I’ve given online dating advice, I think they do some harm when used wrong. This is especially true for guys who think a wink is the appropriate place to start (I feel it’s not…I think guys should man-up and send an email).

Also, it’s nice that Match.com lets non-paying members use some features but that only complicates things when you get a wink. I get this question from time to time from a reader:

He winked at me but when I winked back I never heard from him again! This has happened 3 times now! What am I doing wrong?

In all likelihood, she’s not doing anything wrong! It may have been as simple as his not being a subscriber…but it just ends up creating confusion for her.

I’m sure there’s been relationships started using winks but I would argue those relationships could have just as easily been started with an email. Using winks does have a place but I’m still not a big fan of this feature.

Hidden Profiles

This isn’t a feature that’s going to help you meet people but I do like that it exists. If you start a relationship (or get tired of online dating), this allows you to take a break from online dating without deleting your profile.

I’d like to recommend this to everyone: if you find yourself dating someone exclusively, then HIDE YOUR PROFILE. Leaving it up just creates all kinds of issues as I’ve discussed here and here. As you’ll see in those articles, guys are particularly bad about this.

VIP Email

This feature actually creates some confusion among a lot of people and I have discussed some of this confusion in my post on Match Frequently Asked Questions and discussed how I would use them in How to Use VIP Emails.

A VIP Email is an email you can only send once a week. When you send this you’re sending a clear message to the person receiving the email that you really like them. You’ll see a “Use Your VIP Email” when you’re writing an email message if it’s available.

In addition, this email is handled in some special ways. First, you’ll be notified when they’ve read your email. The second thing this does is marks your profile as green in the account of the person you contacted and keeps you highlighted there for a month. Also, any future emails you send to them will be bolded and highlighted in green, again for a month.

New VIP emails are given early on Monday morning but they don’t rollover…so if you don’t use it, you lose it. It might even be worth creating yourself a reminder on Sundays to be sure you use this feature as often as you can.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Good
There is some debate on the usefulness of this feature. I saw one blogger saying that ever using a VIP email was a sign of desperation and that he’d never be caught dead using one. I disagree and I think it’s a nice compliment to be paid. I think another nice option is to use your VIP email as an email someone you are already getting on well with on the site. That’s a much better compliment than a wink!

Favorites

Favorites are straight forward: they are the profiles that you flag as the ones you like the most. I normally used this feature to keep track of the people that I planned to contact at some point in the future and would normally remove them after I had contacted them. You need not do this though as you can have up to 100 favorites at one time.

Keep in mind that when you Favorite someone they can see this activity (so they’ll know you flagged them as a favorite).

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Fair
From the point of view of meeting new people, I generally don’t see this as a strong feature. However, since the people you favorite know when you favorite them I do think it has some value. It can let them know you’re interested and encourage them to contact you. Alternately, if you favorite them after you started talking through email they’d know that you’re really interested. Because of areas like this, I do think the feature can be helpful.

DateSpark

DateSpark is a feature that allows you to suggest a first date and see if you can “spark” any interest with others through this idea. Other members can then comment on your idea to let you know what they think of your first date idea. Obviously this serves as a good icebreaker that can lead into a first date.

Note: If you want to change your DateSpark idea, you’ll need to delete your current idea and then create a new one.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Good
I think this is a helpful feature that adds yet another way to get the conversation going. I’m sure some people have had a lot of success with this feature…there’s actually even a dating service built around this one idea.

matchPhone

MatchPhone (which was previously called matchTalk) allows you to have phone conversations without giving out your actual phone number. You can basically talk anonymously on your phone using this feature.

When you use this feature you are assigned a new phone number and then you can initiate phone conversations from the website. You can give this number to your matches and whenever that number is called it is forwarded to your phone. Also, when you call using the phone it only shows the MatchTalk phone number, not your personal number.

You can also use this service to send and receive text messages on your phone without revealing your phone number – again, a very nice feature.

Note: This feature has an additional charge and is an add-on to your normal subscription.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Excellent
I love this feature. When I was dating online this feature wasn’t a part of Match.com and I was always hesitant to give out my phone number. This feature would have made me far more comfortable to jump to the phone quicker. I’m sure this feature isn’t for everyone and I wish it was free, but it’s a great idea that is also really unique.

Mutual Matches

Mutual Matches are people that Match.com determines as those who best fit your criteria where you also bet fit their criteria. For example:

• I have 15 requirements in my profile and Woman A matches 14 of those requirements
• Woman A has 12 requirements in her profile and I match 10 of those requirements

In the above case, Match.com would flag the two of us as a Mutual Match since we both have a number of areas that match what the other person is lookiing for.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Poor
I suppose this is debatable and I imagine people have had success with this feature, but I don’t like it. I like the idea of it but here’s my problem: if someone says they don’t care about a particular area then I will be a good match no matter what. As an example, let’s say a woman says she doesn’t care what my height is. Well, regardless of whether I’m 4’8″ or 6’10″ I’m going be identified as a good match for that woman.

Now here’s where things get really bad: lots and lots of people create profiles where they don’t specify what they would like the other person to have in most areas. What this means is that all of these people who didn’t fill out their profile appear at the top of my Mutual Matches list. I match everything they are looking for because they’re (claiming to) not look for anything!

To put it another way, if people say they will date anyone then everyone is a mutual match. It’s not Match.com’s fault that people don’t fill out their profile appropriately but the feature still suffers for it. Now perhaps Match.com has gotten better, but when I was using the service I didn’t find this feature very helpful. Yes, occasionally there were women who were valid mutual matches but more often it was the case I describe above.

Singled Out

Singled Out is actually a sub-feature of the Daily Matches feature. Every now and again, Match.com will provide you a Daily Match that they think is a really good connection for you. This match is considered Singled Out and the only difference with this type of match is that they are the first match you are provided in your daily matches and you have to review them first.

The frequency of the Singled Out matches isn’t clear but it likely depends on how well Match.com’s algorithm works. I suspect the more Daily Matches you review, the better your chances are to get a Singled Out match.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Fair
This is fine feature but if it disappeared I doubt many people would be affected. I guess the way I look at it is that this feature doesn’t provide much more than the Daily Matches was already providing…except that one of my matches has a new label. Perhaps I’m not being fair but this feature just doesn’t excite me.

Email Read Notification

Email Read Notification is another add-on feature that you have to pay to use. It does exactly what it sounds like: it lets you know when someone opened an email you sent.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Fair
I don’t think this feature leads to many relationships on its own and when viewed in a certain light it might be seen as creepy. However, the main reason that I like that this feature is because many people get discouraged when dating online when they don’t get as many responses as they would like to. Often responses aren’t received because the person contacted isn’t a subscriber to Match.com and this feature reveals this because non-subscribers can’t open emails. So I see this feature as encouragement to keep trying when you realize things aren’t as bad as they appear. If free members could open emails I wouldn’t see much value in this feature.

Reverse Matching

Reverse Matching shows you singles that you are a good fit for but where they aren’t a great fit for you.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Poor
See my comments on Mutual Matching for why I’m not a fan of this feature. Mutual Matching is actually better since you can control how much you fill out in your profile.

matchMobile

MatchMobile is Match.com for mobile devices. Most of the features are present such as searching, browsing, emails, winks and so on. If you’ve used apps for other websites on your phone, it’s going to be a similar experience.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Excellent
Given the direction technology is headed this feature is basically a requirement for any dating service. Obviously, it’s a great feature to provide.

Still, I’d urge caution when using it. Not to over-think things too much, but using a mobile app could put yourself in a position to always be available whenever anyone contacts you. Sometimes being available at any moment can come off as unattractive (or in the worst cases, a bit desperate). I’m not saying you should arbitrarily wait X number of hours before responding to people…but if you’re always on Match.com then you might want to consider taking some breaks.

Filtered Mail

Filtered Mail lets you remove messages from members who don’t match certain characteristics you are looking for. For example, if you’re a woman looking to date men between 30 and 40 and a 50-year-old man contacts you, a filter could be created to automatically move that email out of your inbox into a spam-like folder. You can have up to 7 filters at one time and you can still read the filtered emails if you want to, but they won’t show in your main inbox.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Good
I think this is helpful for women who can be flooded by emails. Unfortunately, I have a lot of women complain to me that it seems like men don’t even pay attention to what they are looking for. Seems like Match.com must have heard this same complaint as this feature can be helpful for those in this situation.

Match.com by Mail

Match.com by Mail is a feature where you are emailed your mutual matches. You can set this up to email you every day or every 3 days or once a week. You can also add custom searches which I feel is the best part of this feature. Basically, if you create a custom search you can then save that custom search. When you save a custom search you can set an option to receive matches for this search by email.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Excellent
If this feature were only based on Mutual Matches I wouldn’t like it at all. However, since you can create your own customized searches to be emailed to you, I think this is a great feature. Do you secretly hope to date a vegan but feel like it’s too much of hassle to try to search every day? Let this feature to do the work for you.

Highlight Messages

By pressing a Highlight button in the upper right of the profile text, you can highlight text in someone’s profile. After highlighting the text, a box is provided to send the person a message on what you think of that topic in their profile. I imagine most of the time this would be used to send a quick blurb about something they wrote about without having to write a full email

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Fair
Anyone who can use this feature could have also just copied and pasted the text or just gone off of memory so I don’t feel like this feature is adding much. It is a nice convenience feature but if we’re measuring all the features by how well they improve your odds of meeting someone, I’m not convinced this is doing much for you. The one area where this might help is if people use it like Twitter to send short messages. That might encourage some people to start communication where they might otherwise struggle (although I’m not convinced of this!)

Highlighted Profiles

Highlighted Profiles is an add-on feature that you have to pay for that will highlight your profile so more attention will be brought to it. The hope is you’ll catch the eye of others before your competition does.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Fair
I suspect that this feature does work. However, this is an add-on feature that you have to pay for…and everyone knows that you’ve paid for it! I worry that it might look a bit desperate to some people. I wish Match.com randomly awarded members 1 month free of Profile Highlighting. This would make the highlighted profiles seem more natural and not stand out for the wrong reason. I admit, I might be over-thinking this one.

Member Spotlight

Member Spotlight aims to gain your profile a lot of “attention” by placing it on Match.com or other sites. For example, your profile photo might appear in an advertisement on Facebook.com in your local area.

Feature Helpfulness to Meeting New People: Poor
I think this is a confusing feature as many people likely assume that Member Spotlight means you’ll be highlighted for other members. In reality, you’re being highlighted most often to non-Match.com members. You’re pretty/handsome face is being used to attract others to the dating service. It’s hard for me to imagine that this helps people meet others and could potentially be very embarrassing if you don’t want your photo on other websites.

The good news is I believe this feature is off by default. If you’re nervous and want to make sure click Profile then Settings and make sure Member Spotlight is “Off”.

Areas of Confusion with Match.com

I want to now touch on some of the “cons” that I mentioned earlier as they come up most often when I’m talking with my readers. Honestly, I don’t hear many complaints about Match.com but when I have, I’d say about half the time its been one of these two.

Risks of Automatic Sign-in

So Match.com aims to do you a favor by automatically signing you in when you visit their website. On its face, this is a fine feature. However, there is an issue that this appears to create. I say “appear” because I’m not 100% sure what’s going on here but this is my theory based on what readers are telling me.

Let’s say you’ve met someone on Match.com. You’re happy and you’re not looking to date anyone else. Match.com continues to send you email for your matches once a week and occasionally you open these emails. You aren’t looking to date anyone, just curious to look at the email. You get home one night and the person you’ve been dating starts yelling at you that they see you’ve been online recently at Match.com three times this month and they’re done with you if you can’t be committed.

“What happened?!” you might say. Well, what appears to be happening is that you are viewing the emails and clicking on profiles not realizing that Match.com is auto-logging you back in. You thought you were just viewing an email but in reality you look like you’re still active on the site.

The REAL Solution to This Problem
So I dislike that Match.com doesn’t make it clear that you’re actually logging in and I do have some doubts regarding what’s going on here…opening an email shouldn’t show you as logged on and I don’t even understand how tht could happen.

Regardless, I have two posts filled with angry comments from people (mostly women) because the person they were dating keeps logging into Match.com and I’m wonder if a few of these have been created by this feature.

That being said, whether or not people are accidentally logging on or not, Match.com isn’t the issue in my mind. The issue is that when you get into a relationship you should HIDE YOUR PROFILE. You’re not looking any longer so why keep your profile visible? Hide your profile and now it doesn’t matter if you happen to look at a profile in an email that is sent to you.

It seems that men are particularly resistant to hiding their profile. If you’ve met a great woman, why keep the profile up? You can blame Match all you want but at the end of the day you decided to keep it active.

6 Month Guarantee Takes Real Work

Match.com doesn’t advertise their 6 month Guarantee any longer…or if they do I’m not seeing it. Either way, this feature can be very difficult to qualify for. There are many requirements you have to meet to qualify for this and if you miss just ONE requirement ONCE, you’re out. You can see my post on the 6 Month Guarantee for more details on this.

Understanding Bad Reviews for Match.com

You’ll notice that overall I have a positive opinion of Match.com. You’ll likely visit other sites (or possibly read the comments below someday) and find people who are absolutely furious over how bad Match.com is. How can this be? How can I like a service that so many others are furious with? Who’s right?

Well I’m right obviously!

Seriously, though, I think there’s something to keep in mind: people happy with the service are far less motivated to discuss Match.com than those who are unhappy. Those who are unhappy feel like they’ve been “taken” and are looking for an outlet to get back at Match.com. Those happy forget the service when they’re done. I found my wife on Match.com but never felt inclined to go to review websites and talk the service up…even though I was thrilled with my experience.

While I imagine Match.com has failed some of its members, my experience running this site has shown me something interesting. There are some people out there who only want to have success their way. For example, I’ve been contacted by people who are very upset with Match.com. When I ask them to send me samples of emails they are sending or their profile, it’s no surprise why they are having trouble! I then offer them suggestions…but you know what? As often as not they don’t want to change their approach. They want Match.com to work with a bad approach and if it doesn’t then it’s the worst dating service…EVER!

Now I’m not saying Match.com is perfect but it is a very good dating service. I’m also not saying that people shouldn’t complain about the service if they didn’t like something. I’m sure there are many people with very valid complaints. However, if you’re confused because I like the service while someone else hates it, keep this in mind.

Final Thoughts on My Match.com Review

I’m a fan of Match.com. When I started to have real success with online dating, much of that success came from using Match.com. As long as you can become comfortable with online dating and can understand a few good approaches, I believe that this service is one of the best options. There are some confusing features and to someone new to online dating it can be overwhelming. However, if you can be persistent and learn what works well with online dating, I believe this is a service that does enable its members to have success.

Yes, Match.com isn’t perfect but in many cases it’s the best option available and it is the service that I personally had the most success with.

Try Match.com Today

Related posts:

1. Match.com: Overview
2. How to Use VIP Emails at Match.com
3. MatchAffinity Review: Online Dating for the UK Single

What I tell my readers is this: I wouldn’t be too worried about moving to personal email accounts. Often the reason people ask this is because they’re embarrassed to log into dating service at locations other than their house but they want to be able communicate throughout the day. They may also want to move to personal email because they can then easily communicate from their phone or any other number of reasons.

Using a Personal Email While Staying Extra Safe

The primary risk in giving out your personal email happens if you decide you want to stop communicating with them but they kept contacting you. That sounds like a minor risk but it can actually be quite annoying. With that in mind, I recommend the following:

1. Go to Gmail or Yahoo! Mail and create a new email account. Use your real first name for this account but leave off your last name.

2. Whenever someone asks to move to personal email but you’re still not sure about them, give them this email. This allows the conversation to move to a more common medium without introducing risk to your personal inbox.

Most of the time when I give this advice, the response is, “Oh yeah! Create a new email account…why didn’t I think of that?” However, not everyone agrees with my suggestion. One reader wrote back the following:

All of the dating sites say not to go to private email, that is the sign of a scammer. Hello!!!!! The fact that none of these men email me back on site says to me —– they are scammers. So you are saying create a “fake” email account with Minnie Mouse as the owner and email these guys. What is the purpose in that when the dating site has it? If the argument is you don’t want to log on to a dating site at work, what is the difference than logging on to a private email account at work. Both are not work related. That argument is not logical.

Honestly, if you feel strongly that you should only communicate on the dating service, I support that (which is what I told this reader). That said, to clear up a few things that there seemed to be some confusion on when I offered her this advice:

• You’re not creating a fake email. It’s a real email that you really own. It’s just not your personal email that you’ve been using for the last 10 years. If someone decided they want to write you three emails an hour for the next ten hours, your personal email remains unaffected.
• The issue isn’t just about following work rules. While my work would crack down on browsing Match.com a lot faster than it would browsing to Gmail, the real issue here is being embarrassed to use Match.com away from home.
• The longer you keep all your communication on the dating service, the more the dating service benefits. I’m not saying that the dating services are wrong for suggesting you only communicate on their service. The dating services do offer protection email can’t. However, I’m fairly certain that there is more motivation for the dating services to suggest this outside of keeping their members safe.

In the example above, my reader claimed to have been using online dating for years and never had any success. She said that when people wanted to move to personal email then she knew she was dealing with a scammer. I’m afraid she was ignoring/rejecting all the men who wanted to take the relationship to the next step (however small).

A Warning on Moving to Personal Email Accounts Rapidly
There is one other risk with moving to personal email accounts. It happens less often and requires that you move to personal email very quickly but it’s a problem that exists.

The risk is that you’re talking to a scammer. Often a scammer will steal credit card numbers, sign up for a dating service, convince men or women to move to the conversation to personal emails and then attempt to use the Romance Scam on them.

The dating service eventually realizes the account was created with a stolen credit card and they cancel it. When the person being scammed notices the dating profile is gone, the scammer will tell them they decided they want to concentrate on building the relationship between the two of them and will say that they took their profile down.

This might sounds scary but this is easy to combat: if anyone ever, ever, ever asks you for money then you’re likely dealing with a scammer. You can also fight this by not moving to personal email for a week or so.

Taking a Chance to Find Love
There are a lot of great people on dating sites but we’ll never know unless we give them a chance. Giving people a chance often involves some risk. Giving out your email is a risk but so is going on a first date with someone you’ve never met!

I feel that if we’re careful, most of these risks can be mitigated to the point that the risk is very small. In this case, if you can be cautious, use a different email for dating communication, and run for the hills if they ask for money then I think moving to personal emails is something you should be open to doing.

Related posts:

1. Online Dating Email Tips: More on First Email Length
2. Online Dating Scams: Additional Scams
3. Problems with the Second Online Dating Email

Online dating should come naturally and if it doesn’t come naturally for me, then I guess I shouldn’t be using it. Online dating is hard and that’s a problem…right?

I think the idea that online dating should come easy is a common misperception. It’s easy to see why people would think online dating would be easy: log into a website with thousands of singles looking to date – how hard could it be? The thing is, there’s a lot that isn’t natural to us about online dating.

1. Does writing positively about yourself (without bragging) come naturally to you?
2. Does pursuing strangers to convince them to go on a date you come naturally?
3. Do blind dates feel natural?

If you can answer all those questions with a confident “Yes”, then it would make sense to me that online dating would come naturally to you. If, however, you’re like me and you answer “No” to those questions, then I have to ask: why would you think online dating would feel natural?

Online Dating Can Be Hard Work
I think at the heart of the issue is the fact that for most of us online dating is going to be hard work. I devote a fair portion of my dating guide trying to convince people to take the amount of effort that online dating will require seriously. Far too often I find myself talking to people who didn’t take the effort seriously and then turn around and see themselves as a failure when they’re not in a relationship after a few months.

That said, from my personal experience I can see that the hard work and frustration was worth it. Was it fun dating online for six months and only ending up with one or two first dates? Was it fun having women write me back to explain in great detail exactly why they would never date me? Was it fun to see women I thought I’d made a connection with simply disappear? Of course not. But in the end, the effort was still worth it.

Often success with online dating comes down to how persistent you are. The annoyances found in online dating can drive many singles away from it. So if you’re new to online dating or just feel like you’re failing because it’s not coming naturally, remember: online dating isn’t easy for most of us. If it did come easy, then a website like this wouldn’t even need to exist. Instead, it can be hard work…so cut yourself some slack and try to stay persistent. The reward is well worth all the headaches it requires.

Related posts:

1. Is Online Dating Worth It?
2. Group Dating: Another Way To Date Online
3. Frustrated or Confused With Online Dating?

I have never used this approach but it sounded interesting to me and I wanted to share it here. If you find yourself tiring of the traditional email a woman, wait,
email a woman, wait approach then this might be something worth giving a try.

Match Instant Messenger: The Gateway Communication

So basically the approach goes something like this: use the instant messenger to move to a more personalized form of communication more quickly. In this case, this is the specific approach he took:

1. First, he would find a woman he was interested in who was currently online
2. Next he would send her an instant message. My friend said sometimes he would use email instead of IM but he still stuck with the rule of only contacting women that were currently online.
3. He would then get the conversation started and try to allow the conversation to let them get a good feel for one another.
   
4. When he had to go, he would explain that he prefers texting over being tied to the computer and would give her his cell number. He then encouraged her to send him a text if she’d like to talk more.
5. At this point, he had a better line of communication with the woman and found that he was meeting more women than with his previous approach.

Note: An alternative to step four is to suggest you become Facebook friends. My friend has been using this approach instead of text messages and says he’s having success with the approach. The point isn’t so much about texting or Facebook as it is about move the communication to a more convenient and friendly arena.

Again, I never used this approach myself but I can see how it could be effective. I think this is especially true for those younger generations who see texting as their primary form of communication and have no reservations about exchanging their number.

What about you? Have you had any success with an approach like this? Or is this an approach that you think introduces more risk than you’d like to take? I’d be interested to see what others think of this approach!

Related posts:

1. Lavalife Free Instant Messager Event – July 28 2010
2. How to Use Match.com
3. Match.com Winks and Women: How to Use and Respond

Beyonce and Jay-Z
These two kept their relationship very secretive at the beginning, so much so that no one knew the two singers were married until a long time after the ceremony took place. This in itself inspires respect for the couple. They’re also a very high earning team, both almost constantly releasing record-breaking new tunes. These two are sure to be in the limelight for a while longer.

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem
This gorgeous Spanish couple has also received a great deal of media attention this year. Penelope became the face of fragrance Lancôme and was also voted the ‘most sought after celebrity body’ in a Daily Telegraph survey. Javier was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Butiful. And as the cherry on top of this successful year, these two had their first child, Leo, together.

Kate and Will
Last and definitely not least, these two royals celebrated their nuptials earlier this year in a country-wide celebration that will never be forgotten. Over the course of the year they have visited Canada, Kate coming into her own as a true Princess.

Whether you’re meeting people through a dating site or stubbornly staying single, these celebrity couples are sure to inspire you towards a renewed faith in love. Let’s just hope they get through another year.

Related posts:

1. Dating Resolutions for 2011
2. Office Romances: Rules for Winter Work Parties
3. How Watching a Great Ad Can Help You with Online Dating.

Related posts:

1. Chemistry.com Free Weekend, May 13th – 15th 2011
2. Chemistry.com Free Communication Weekend Jan 7th – 9th
3. Chemistry.com Free Weekend Dec 2 – 4, 2011

The answer is…there is no answer. Sorry, but only you know when you’re ready to dip your toe in the dating pool. The important thing to remember is, don’t rush into anything. It’s unlikely that you’ll be searching for another marriage so soon, so now is the time to relax and have a good time! But there are a few things to think about when searching for the perfect date online:

What are Your Interests?
We’re all guilty of the odd fib but your online dating profile should be honest about who you are. So putting that you love sky diving just to impress a potential partner will only end in disaster! If you prefer cooking at home and going to the theatre, say so, there is likely to be someone out there who shares the same passions and interests as you. And it’s never too late to find a new hobby.

When in a long term relationship, things can get in the way of us pursuing our hobbies. Maybe you were really passionate about something, but your other half wasn’t so keen? In that case, now is a better time than ever to rekindle your interest in an old hobby. You never know, you may even meet someone! If not it’ll give you the opportunity to be the person you want to be, and create an honest online dating profile.

Make Time for Loved Ones.
Although it is important to get out there and meet new people, make sure you take your old friends along for the ride. Just because you’re moving on with your life it doesn’t mean you have to start all over again. Make sure that you don’t spend all your free time looking out for a new partner. Set aside time to go out with friends and make time for your family. But it’s okay to be selfish sometimes too.

Remember to Find Time for Yourself
Go to the gym, exercise classes, anything! It can be tempting to let yourself go a bit when you’re married. Everyone does it! But now you’re single you need to start looking after yourself. The better you look and the healthier you feel will make you both more confident and positive about the future. And for when you do find your perfect date, confidence and positivity will make you more attractive!

But most of all remember to have a good time, relax and don’t put any pressure on yourself!

Related posts:

1. Online Dating Photos: Tips to Help Improve Success
2. With Online Dating, Meeting Matters
3. New Year’s Resolutions and Online Dating

I have a free online dating guide that you can download but I realize not everyone wants a full book on dating to read. Because of that, I wanted to list of a few of my articles that I think are most helpful to someone new to online dating:

Online Dating Checklist
If you’re looking to read as little as possible, this is the article for you. I take a lot of the advice I give here and try to trim it down to as small a list as I can.

Writing a Better First Email
In this article, I walk through what should (and should not) be in the first email you send to someone. While quite often men do most of the contacting, I think this can be helpful for women. Even if it’s just to recognize that for some guys (some great guys) it can be difficult to write that first email and being a bit understanding can be quite helpful!

Being Normal Online
In this post, I discuss how just being normal can go a long way. This is not to say you should not be unique in your profile but getting carried away can be a killer when trying to meet someone new. When we go out of our way to try and be clever or unique, we can sometimes do more harm than good.

Online Dating and Unnecessary Rules
A discussion on how hyper-specific some people can be in what they are looking for and why it can lead to so much frustration. Hopefully this isn’t you!

Going on a First Date
So, you’ve made it to your first “first date”. Now what? In this article I discuss the approach that worked well for me and how I would prepare for my first dates.

My Online Dating Success Story
This is the story of how I came to meet my wife using online dating. I don’t suppose this article is very helpful in itself but I do hope that it serves as a reminder that you can have success online if you feel like you want to give up.

I hope these articles are helpful land I hope that you find everything you are looking for in the new year!

Related posts:

1. An Introduction to Online Dating
2. Tips on Asking and Getting Asked Out
3. New Year’s Dating Resolution: Finding that Special Someone

Sign up eHarmony to Try the Free Weekend

If you’ve been on the fence about trying eHarmony, it could be the perfect time to try during the free weekend. This is mostly because we’re headed into the busiest time for online dating and there will be more people looking to date (thanks to some New Year’s resolutions).

Best of luck to everyone who gives it a try! You also can see my article on the full list of free weekends at eHarmony.

Related posts:

1. eHarmony Free Weekend: May 27th to May 30th 2011
2. eHarmony Free Communication Event Dec 27th to Jan 2nd
3. eHarmony Free Communication Weekend, July 2nd – 5th 2010

If you’re considering making such dating resolution this year and plan to use online dating as a part of that resolution, I’d like to encourage you to do the following:

So take your resolution seriously and admit that it will take effort to stick by it.

Don’t Make an Arbitrary Resolution
If you say to yourself, “My New Year’s resolution is to try online dating” that’s all well and good but you can quit a week later and claim to have met your resolution. The problem there is you’ve not really solved the problem. You’re not resolving to date online because you want to date online. You’re resolving to date online so you can find a relationship.

With that in mind, I would encourage you to commit to a specific amount of time. I think February 14th is a great starting point because the dating services will be extra busy up until that date. After Valentine’s day things are said to drop off (I’ve never seen the numbers but it’s what I hear). Six weeks is a way better resolution than something non-specific.

Be Willing to Meet People
I talk about this in my guide but I’ll say it again here: there are too many people searching for the perfect person and then trying to date them instead of taking the approach of dating a lot of people and trying to find the perfect person.

Even if they don’t seem like “the one”, it’s just a date! They may not be everything you are hoping for but could you have fun? Do they sound interesting? What good is a resolution if you’re so strict you never meet a single person? People generally don’t like this advice but until you start giving other people a chance, you may find yourself struggling. Maybe that great guy or girl can’t create the perfect profile. That doesn’t make them any less great!

Overall, I think it comes down to taking things seriously. The person committing to stop smoking as their resolution knows things will be difficult and they mentally prepare for that. I hope you do the same and I hope you find success in doing so!

Related posts:

1. Dating Resolutions for 2011
2. New Year’s Dating Resolution: Finding that Special Someone
3. Online Dating Advice for the Shy