Shocking relevation, Match and Yahoo are most popular

by David Evans on August 23, 2005 in Dating Research

ZDNet research department quoting a traffic report from Comscore that quotes a Jupiter analyst:

Top online dating sites: Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, Spark by ZDNet’s ZDNet Research — The US online dating industry is expected to grow by 9% YTY with revenues of $516 mln in 2005 coming from consumer subscriptions alone, said Jupiter Research. That’s slower than the 19% growth in 2004. There are 86 mln single adults who control annual spending of $1.6 trillion, according to Date.com. Online dating sites reach about 30% of that market currently.

Visitor-based stats based on flawed measurement algorithms don’t do anyone any good. I’m all for comparisons, but month after month Comscore continues to include sites that have no business being on the Top 10 lists. I expect the situation to get worse before it gets better because obviously nobody at Jupiter or Comscore is paying attention, they crank out these traffic rankings and move on to the next one.

Of particular interest, -5% growth for True, Tickle (LoveHappens) at #5 and 0% growth for Spark. Spark’s bankers must be freaking out about that, with their IPO looming on the horizon.

Number9, Zencom, is not even a website, nothing on Google or Technorati that leads to a dating site. It seems as though Zencom might host DemocraticPeopleMeet.com and RepublicanPeopleMeet.com.

Who is running these stats? Are they phoning them in from vacation somewhere?

[tags: match.com, true.com, yahoo personals]