Yahoo! Personals is a large, easy to use and appealing online dating site. Demographic statistics are not available for this site, but unlike other sites, you can read all of your messages and view profiles with photographs before you commit to a subscription. Yahoo! Personals offers one of the most flexible search and match functions and novel filters for viewing your soon to be growing list of communication from members.
Yahoo! Personals allow you to better access the dating pool potential before paying a membership fee. Not only can you search for free, but once you’ve posted your profile, you can see who has viewed you, a feature not available on most other top sites. From this list, you can see a photo, complete profile and when your profile was viewed. Like what you see? Consider joining, and you will be able to communicate with other members. This is one of the largest dating sites, but demographic information is not available from Quantcast separate from the parent site yahoo.com.
If you are a Yahoo user, the registration process is quick, otherwise allow a few extra minutes to set up an account with Yahoo! and make a new e-mail account. Be patient, the dating profile is detailed and includes preferences not seen anywhere else, which are useful on searches.
Appearance, lifestyle and home life questions are typical of most online dating site, but Yahoo! Personals offer a fourth section in the profile: personality. In addition to the standard interests and astrological signs, you can reveal your preferred social setting like Social Butterfly or Home Body and your TV watching habits like Sports Nut and Channel Hopper. Yahoo! Personals offer an essay and the ability to add up to ten photos.
Also, as part of your profile creation you will answer questions as to what you are looking for. You will answer questions in the same genre as the questions you answered about yourself, such as appearance, lifestyle, home life, personality and an about tab where you can request certain questions to be answered.
You can choose to have your profile searchable on Yahoo! personals, in partnering sites, or to have it only viewable by those whom you contact.
Like match.com, at Yahoo! Personals you may take the initiative and search for matches and Yahoo! Personals will search for you and provide matches based on your profile; the frequency of these matches by email is up to you. Searches may be basic or customized by the information available on the profile. You may also search by keywords. You may save any of your searches to make searching easier in the future. Your primary search will be used to generate your matches by mail. This same filter is used to generate Yahoo’s “We Match” results accessed on your home page. You can filter this list by new members, members active in the last 24 hours and online now.
You can choose to be alerted at your Yahoo! e-mail account with information up to three times a week telling you who has viewed your profile, match notifications and new photo posts.
All communication is done through Yahoo! services including IM and e-mail. Additional services include all services which are included with a normal Yahoo! account.
Yahoo! Personals is a well-designed site with novel filters and views that may take some experimentation until you find what works best for you. Navigation between mailbox and profiles is seamless. In your mailbox, you see a clear photo when available, basic information and a message snippet, so it is easy to decide whether or not to respond. The icons to your communication options are well placed and facilitate communication.
With a renovated site and many new features, online daters may want more help or have more questions when using Yahoo! Personals for the first few times. Unfortunately, the help section does not address questions like how “We Match,” “I Match,” and “Maybes” are assigned. The help section should be expanded to fully explain all of the features so users can take full advantage of them.
Yahoo! provides a dating advice section to help you get more out of Yahoo! where you can read articles on how to get started with dating, an introduction to relationships, and dating tips.
Helpful tips on getting better results from Yahoo! Personals are included on your home page. You may contact Yahoo! Personals by email. Forms are available for billing questions, general questions, profile questions and success stories.
You won’t go wrong with Yahoo! Personals. You’ll enjoy some amusing personality traits revealed in the profiles and a novel approach to categorizing your matches and communication from members. Yahoo! Personals does not offer as many additional services of the two top-ranked sites, but does have a large pool, which puts it at number three.
