Yahoo Personals Review

Yahoo! Personals is a little unusual. As one of the oldest and largest online dating services, with more visitors a month (5 million) than any other service, you’d expect to find a wide range of services and lots of fluffy extras on offer. Not so.

Yahoo! Personals is about one thing only – singles dating - and they’ve kept things simple. You’ll find lots of clever, useful features but no frills, in a site that’s an absolute winner for being straightforward and user-friendly.

You’ll see what I mean when you get to the Yahoo! Personals home page.It’s clean, simple (nothing like their web portal) with an up front explanation of what they’re about and how it works. There are no personality tests to take and you don’t have to post a profile until you want to. Simply sign up and get searching.

Profiles are detailed and interesting and you can browse through them right away using the Quick, Keyword and Advanced search tools. A great thing about the Advanced option is that your search results aren’t black and white. As well as perfect matches (marked with a red star) results include the people who come close to matching your “wish list”. A “percentage match meter” by their profile shows just how close. It’s a great little system – simple but effective - that means you get the final say on who’s worth looking at. Who knows? Maybe the 89% match is “the one”. You can name and save Advanced Searches to run anytime, or opt for “Matches by Mail” which runs the search on a regular basis and emails the results.

Once you’ve posted a profile you can play your own matchmaker. For instance, you can use one-click “Are we a Match” tool on every profile for a side by side comparison of you and your potential date. You can also take advantage of the “Mutual Match” feature which tracks down the type of person you’re interested in but only the ones who are also looking for
someone like you.

You can send free, one-time messages - “Icebreakers” - to anyone who catches your eye, and they can send a free, one-time reply. As a subscriber, you can exchange emails or instant messages. Some sites, especially Match.com, are much bigger on communications but again, Yahoo! Personals keeps it simple.

The site’s super user-friendly and conveniently placed links mean you don’t have to hit the back button all the time and can quickly get to know the site. The combination of simplicity and useful features at Yahoo! Personals will appeal to anyone who’s used to chatting online and wants to cut to the chase or, at the other end of the scale, is completely new to online dating scene – the atmosphere’s fun and friendly.

Not for you? Read another review.