Yahoo! Personals just introduced several updates to the searching and matching features.
Yahoo! Personals daters performing an average of 3.6 searches per day in their quest for that connection. In addition to a visual refresh that features new profile cards that more clearly convey information, additional enhancements include:
- New matching capabilities that improve search relevance by taking into account profile and searcher preferences.- One-click “We Match� displays people who strongly match what an individual is looking for and the individual strongly matches what those people are looking for.
- One-click “I Match� allows users to find people who are looking for someone with their qualities, based on information in their profiles and potential matches’ profiles; and also allows users to see who’s looking for someone like them.
- Search filters and markers at the top of the results page that allow daters to easily modify the results based on recently-added (i.e. “new�) profiles, online now status, and active in the past 24 hours—and that carry that information through your search experience.
- Redesigned Search Results display that increases the number of visible profiles and improves scannability. The two-column profile display allows users to manage and organize profiles, and send email and icebreakers—all from the Search Results page.
I like how Yahoo! Personals now shows exactly how many people match your search criteria, and the filters seem to work as advertised.
The Tell Me About conversation starters are new as well. Everyone needs help breaking the ice.
The ads on the bottom of the search results page were geo-targeted allright, but the quality of the ads was pretty low-brow.
Y! Personals should start reaping the benefits of the new infrastructure, now it’s time to turn up the marketing machine. More partnerships in the works? I think so.
One question I have for all everyone, how many people use the “Share this profile” feature? I’ve sent a profile to a friend probably three times, ever.
Speaking of infrequently-used features, what about the “Hide this profile” feature? I’ve used Match as the de facto site to aspire to for ages, perhaps it’s time to add Yahoo! Personals to the mix.
No related posts.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I guess this is why Yahoo Personals settled their patent infringement lawsuit a few weeks ago.
With the sharp increase in the number of internet users, online dating has likewise continued to thrive. Online dating is currently occupying the largest proportion of paid up advertisement on the web. With more than a thousand dating sites available today,competition for matchmaking has become an all important aspect of the big players in the market. It is imperative to note that when a big player in finance, technology sets sight on online
With the sharp increase in the number of internet users, online dating has likewise continued to thrive. Online dating is currently occupying the largest proportion of paid up advertisement on the web. With more than a thousand dating sites available today,competition for matchmaking has become an all important aspect of the big players in the market. It is imperative to note that when a big player in finance, technology sets sight on online dating, then there is money to be made.
I met my husband on Match.com in 1998 and have a fondness for Match as a result, but since becoming a Romance Coach in 2002, my clients have educated me about Yahoo! Personals. And (fair disclosure) I now write for Yahoo! Personals as well. I recommend Match and Yahoo equally as the best all-around mainstream sites, always suggesting one or both for my clients. While Yahoo has been lagging in style and certainly is more rag-tag than Match, my clients do equally well on either site. I can’t state a preferance for one over the other.
Improvement? You’re kidding right? For starters, the grid in gallery mode is much larger. That means we see fewer images per page, which means the user has to do more work to see all the images. Second, in the old scheme the keyword search parameters were alongside the results, so it was easy to change them and resubmit the search. Now they’re separate, so each keyword must be entered from scratch. They took a fair system and made it worse.
However, Yahoo’s real problem is that is that appears to have very few members. From my angle, it’s about 1/6 the size of Match.
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
I have used most of the top personals sites over the past 2 years and can say that while there are bogus profiles in most of them, Yahoo Personals has by far the MOST fake profiles; those coming from Nigeria and Russia. Yahoo seems to tolerate it to boost their rating. As far as features, Match is way ahead of Yahoo. I have not tried eHarmey yet.
This looks like more of the same to me from Yahoo. These simple types of matching and searching filters you can find on just about all of the other dating sites out there. When are they going to introduce something a bit smarter, something that would really make us say wow “online dating is really worth a lookâ€?. After all, you can’t sum a person up with a few check boxes. I’d like to try online dating that’s intelligent and learns what profiles and pictures I like, and shows them to me. I’m not the only one with this idea .See here.
I would like to meet a girl with the same interests as I do.
How Yahoo improves search has been shown up here in detail which has been given great importance.
{ 2 trackbacks }