EXPECTATIONS run high for the market leader in online dating.
Match.com has emboldened a reported 20m members to "make love happen" and claims to have been successful for an unverifiable one million couples. Technically, this means a prospective one in ten chance of securing a partner.
The website boasts 50,000 singletons join daily but does not specify what proportion of this hoard are actually paying subscribers you can contact.
Whatever the figures, it clearly has the highest footfall of online hopefuls and manages to keep a fairly strong hold on the market. For now.
Iconic billboards persuade us to "take the lottery out of love" and stop leaving such vital life decisions in the hands of fickle fate or criminally negligent cupid.
A vast sea of singletons are taking up this challenge with most people knowing someone embarking on its cyber path.
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A month-long comparison with Dating Direct showed Match had ten times more men checking my profile. Of course, not all of them deigned to give me a wink or an email but I was happy with the volume of responses from surfing strangers.
However, while Match is unbeaten for sheer numbers, other sites seem to fair better in bringing people of the same ilk together.
In terms of its basic design, Match is easy to navigate. Cruising for talent in Hampshire postcodes is easy but compatibility is more than sharing a love of classic literature and foreign films.
Match allows singletons to be selective about seemingly pointless criteria like eye colour and diet yet hasn't managed to crack the crux of the mating game - how to bring together compatible character types. Perhaps a psychometric test or series of loaded questions is in order e.g. if you were a natural disaster what would you be and why?
In a bid to narrow down candidates, Match has conjured up four different search methods outside the standard box-ticking/form filling.
"Mutual match" allows both parties' criterion to be pitted against one another, "reverse match" gives a sneak peek at those eyeing up your profile and "user search" finds a specific person. But my personal favourite is a useless feature called "matchwords". Intrinsically it is a keyword search allowing you to label yourself - eg Harley enthusiast - in the faint hope someone who shares your passion will find you in your pigeon-hole-paradise-for-one. Crazy, but it might just work.
The people I dated through Match seemed down-to-earth, nice guys but our mismatched personalities and chemistry meant they didn't progress beyond the first date.
Two of my friends have had polar opposite experiences. A male 35-year-old had no luck whatsoever - forcing embarrassed customer services agents to make good with the site's promise of six month's free membership - while another has just bought her wedding dress. C'est la vie.
Critics complain Match is too expensive and impossible to claim refunds from but, at the moment, it is still the strongest horse offering the best odds.
Just as I was on the verge of signing out of Match for the very last time, an interesting opportunity presented itself. He was cute, well-educated and had a clever profile written by a friend. We have exchanged one email so far so the chase is young but this Southampton match could well be the most promising yet.
Cost: ranges from £22.99 for one month to £64.99 for six months
MAHEESHA KOTTEGODA
PARSHIP.com
Before you sign up to this website you take an online psychometric test, which takes about 20 minutes and is supposed to tell all sorts of things about your personality. When you register, this information is then used to match you to potential partners in your area. You get a list of potentials, ranked on how good a match you are.
The "about me" sections are pretty sensible and easy to fill in.
Unusually, you don't get to see their picture until they choose to reveal it to you, or vice versa.
When you want to get in touch with someone, you can either just send them a message or go for an "icebreaker" - a set of four questions which you answer and then send to them to see how many matches you get.
I really liked the idea of this site but from the outset I didn't get on particularly well with it. Some of the results of my personality test seemed pretty much the opposite of how I am so I doubted how good the matches would be.
I found the geographical search area too wide - I couldn't just look for men in Hampshire but had to look at the whole of the south east, which meant many potentials were just too far away.
I didn't like not seeing people's pictures either. However shallow it might sound, looks are important to most of us. It's pretty brutal to start emailing someone then abandon contact when you see their photo and don't like the look of them: better never to write in the first place.
I also found the site didn't have that much traffic, compared to other dating sites. I exchanged emails with a few men on it but didn't find anyone I wanted to meet up with.
The site is probably best suited to people who are interested in the idea of personality test matching or ones who really don't care what a potential date looks like as long as they write a good email.
Cost: Premium membership (which allows you to exchange messages, get a detailed personality analysis on three or six-month memberships and a contact guarantee on six-month memberships): one month - £35, three months - £57, six months - £84.
SALLY CHURCHWARD
guardian.co.uk/soulmates
The process of joining was very easy and there is the option to download ten photos, which is helpful when browsing.
The other sections offer a tick-list of personality traits and an option to write your own blurb - this worked well.
If you like someone you see you can add them to your favourites, which you would hope would spur them on to contact you but not in my case! I had a few make me their favourite and then I returned the favour but still no contact - I guess I am a bit old-fashioned and prefer the man to make the move!
However, when I did email I was either ignored or told they had found love already! So take your profile off then!
It did seem most of the guys on the site were in the London area and were not prepared to look at ladies outside the area. I would guess many use it to make friends rather than to find a soulmatethe clue being in the name of the website!
Overall, I would say if you don't live in London the rest of the country may not be so well served.
Cost: from £24.99 for one month to £77.70 for six months.
CATHERINE COLLIS
DatingDirect.com
I had high hopes of meeting a variety of lovely and suitable men when I joined Dating Direct, due, in part to the website's slogan "find love or your money back". Unfortunately, the reality was somewhat different.
In its favour, the website is well set up and is easy to use. Each time you log in you can see how many visits, e-mails, contact requests and winks you've had since you last logged on. You can also see how many visits you've had, which can be ego-boosting, or not!
There were lots of members from my local area and plenty more from slightly further afield.
My main problem with the site was that I didn't feel any of the men who were contacting me or any of the men I viewed while searching through the site were potential matches or partners. It didn't appear that I shared common interests with any of them and I wasn't tempted to respond to any of the
e-mails I received or initiate contact with any men from the site. I was also disappointed to receive an obscene e-mail from one member and, after reporting it to Dating Direct, was further disappointed not to receive any communication from them regarding the message.
I concede I may have been a little snobby in that I disregarded messages which contained spelling mistakes and/or grammatical errors, but that aside, I just don't think this is the dating website for me.
Cost: ranges from £29.99 for one month to £59.28 for six months. They also offer a "Find Love or Your Money Back" guarantee If after 12 months of using the site normally you have not found love.
ANNA GRIFFITHS
mysinglefriend.com
This website was set up by TV property developer Sarah Beeny after she started trying to matchmake her friends. Its unique selling point is that rather than having to agonise over what to say about yourself, you get a friend to write it! This has the double advantage of sparing you from having to blow your own trumpet - though you don't get off the hook completely, there is a section for you to fill in, too - and seeing your potential date has at least one friend in the world.
I found this revealed a lot about people's personalities. You get a sense of how the person interacts with their friends and it creates a good atmosphere.
I was amazed at the wide selection of nice, normal, good-looking blokes on the website. Perhaps because it's pretty cheap to join, plus Sarah Beeny's high profile, it has a lot of members and you can search for them by county as well as age, which are definite advantages. The only downside was a bit of teething trouble getting my picture up.
I was really impressed with the number of contacts I got and how many decent blokes there were on the site. The site seems to attract a certain sort of person, in a good way. Plus, I didn't get any seedy or offensive messages, which I know people have got on other dating sites. Everyone seemed genuine and I went on several dates with different men from the site in a pretty short space of time. In fact, if I hadn't started dating someone from the "real world" I have little doubt I would have found someone on the site.
I would recommend this site to everyone.
Cost: Full membership, which allows you to send and receive messages: £20 plus VAT for three months.
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