Match.com Review

Match.com is one of the oldest (and most popular) dating sites online. And throughout the years, Match.com has continued to improve its service, versus remaining stagnant like its sister site, Udate.

Match.com is extremely rich in features, although many of those features will cost you extra money beyond your subscription.

The results Match.com provides are very clean and well organized. When you search, there are 10 results returned on each page, each in its own frame, allowing you to see the person's username, age, location, age of who they are seeking, subject header, and description. In addition, you have the option to send an email, chat (if the person is online), wink at the person, leave a voicemail for the person, or add the person to your favorites.

One of the best things about the search results is that Match.com allows users to state the age range of who they are seeking. This is prominently displayed in the search results. So hopefully this helps filter out a 23 year old female (seeking someone 20-29) from getting messages from 55 year old men. More sites need to use this feature.

I really like how Match.com handles the communication phase. When you go to send an email to someone, a very user friendly email screen pops up that shows the picture of the person and what they said about themselves (so you can refer to it as you write). But the big winner on this screen is the "What to say: seven terrific tips" that gives the writer insight into making a stronger impact with an opening email message.



Another interesting thing about Match.com is that after you send an email to a member, Match.com shows you a list of other members whose profiles were like the one of the person you just emailed. This reminds me of Amazon.com, which gives you a list of similar books to the one you just ordered. My first time seeing this, I had mixed feelings. My interest was in the person I was emailing and suddenly I'm shown other "similar" ones. It's a nice feature, although I personally like to just communicate with just a few people at a time.

The keyword search really sets Match.com apart from other services. I love this feature. The way it works is you type in a word or interest and the system searches matches where the other person has mentioned that in their profile. Here's a tip, though. When typing in more than one word, use quotes. For example, when I searched "roller coaster" (and didn't use quotes), it returned results about roller skating and roller blading. But when you use quotes around your search term then it searches for that specific match. Match.com takes this feature further by allowing you to designate and age range, location range, and whether to only return results with photos. This is a perfect way to find people near you who share a major passion. For example, let's say you love swing dancing. Type in "swing dancing" as your keyword, set your other parameters and soon you'll be presented with profiles of people near you who have specifically mentioned swing dancing.

Match.com also includes a personality survey and quizlets that help you get to know yourself better. Called "self-discovery," these quizlets are easy to take and the results are fun to view. And there are dozens of quizlets - everything from "are you snob?" to "is your honey high maintenance?"


Conclusion

Match.com has more features than any other online dating service. Also, I can't say enough about its keyword search. In many ways, Match.com is setting the standard for other online dating services to follow. But success sometimes comes with a price. With Match.com that price is that there are too many people. And when you have so many people, the physically attractive ones seem to get all the attention - and quite a bit! So for someone who keeps in shape and has an awesome personality, but doesn't look like a model, finding results may be a little more difficult.

Match.com is definitely the best of the "see 'em and pick 'em" type online dating services, but it has a little ways to go to present other forms of strongly matching people, like eHarmony presents. But then again, that may not be their goal, just as it isn't the goal of eHarmony to allow you to see all users signed up on its service - only ones that match you in great detail.

Pros - Cons
well known - too many ads
a lot of people - too many people
real life events - lots of charges for extras
nice personality matching - must sign up to respond