I personally don’t pay much attention to dating and social networking site rankings. I leave that to Hitwise and Comscore. It’s Yahoo, Match, Eharmony, Spark and Friendfinder in the US. Everyone else is fighting for the free and niche eyeballs. For sure, some are fighting better than others but that’s the game right there.
When it comes to Europe, the numbers are even more difficult to compare. SparkNetworks, which is a conglomerate of over a dozen dating sites, has overtaken PerfectMatch, a single website. Huh?
Month after Comscore confuses networks of sites with single sites, dating sites and social networking. How many years until they get it right? I know the lines are blurring, but dating makes far more money than social networking. Who are these rankings for? Consumers don’t pay attention to them, which leaves industry, and the data are so broken as to be unusable in any real strategic planning.
I want to hear about Meetic. They were battling Match for #1 in EU. Now Yahoo comes in and takes the top spot? True.com is the #4 dating site in Europe?
Nielson can’t even get enough panelists to visit the sites to complete their top 15 rankings.
I bet anything over 10th spot isn’t much more than 25,000 members in reality, and even less paying members. Is anyone using this data to gain a competitive edge?
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Is nielson anything other then a complete joke? They have a site thirtyplusingles.com ranked ahead of my site. Its not even a dating site, its a 1 page site for lead generation, those leads are then resold to other dating sites.
Meetic is a bad joke. Nobody attractive. I can name you free sites in Europe that are much better. In fact, I would say the future of dating sites will be free sites.
Also: Meetic has an outrageous programming defect in that you cannot change your age after you sign up. This is BS. Match.com tried to do this a few years ago and half the customers quit in a rage. It doesn’t matter what Meetic managers think about being able to change age. The fact is that many, many customers will quit if you try to force them on the issue. Not that Meetic has any feedback system. When I refused to renew after one month, they never asked me why I quit.
For the record Markus, it’s technically 5 pages. And yes, I got a chuckle out of the rating.
Dave,
Just wondering what document are you referring to in this document? Link?
Markus,
Where’s this neilson data?
Just a long time reader, figured I’d get active.
Onlinepersonalswatch.com lists all the rankings.