There are more sites than ever today dedicated to matching singles. So how do you know which one is right for you? Here’s a breakdown of five of the top sites.

© Cherie Burbach

Match.com® Official Site
Match believes they’ve “created more than a million successful relationships.”

Match has been around over ten years, which makes them one of the first online dating services. They’ve continued to tweak their matching capabilities and now offer keyword searching to find profiles that mention similar phrases or activities. Members can post photos; answer short answer questions, “about me and my date” multiple-choice questions, and show their personality in the all-important essay. Match is so sure you’ll find someone “special,” they’ll give you six months free if you don’t meet someone within the first six months.

Yahoo Personals

“From casual dates to wedding dates, it all happens” on Yahoo.

Yahoo offers two different services, one aimed casual daters and one for lasting relationships. Questions and search criteria are a bit different for each. Online daters can post photos, answer multiple-choice questions, and write an essay on themselves and what they’re looking for in a mate. Yahoo also offers “ice breakers” to help daters begin getting acquainted.

Yahoo! Personals 7 Day FREE Trial offer

eHarmony
“Fall in love for all the right reasons.”

E-Harmony bills itself as America’s #1 “trust relationship service,” claiming that ninety members get married every single day. Rather than matching on just a “picture and a paragraph,” they instead match singles based on compatibility in areas such as values, character, intellect, sense of humor, spiritual beliefs, passion, and up to twenty-four other dimensions. Members are sent possible matches by site, but are not able to search the site themselves. They offer 1-month, 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year memberships.

PlentyofFish
Completely free, Plentyoffish “generates over 300,000 relationships a year,” in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

PlentyofFish has gained popularity as the largest entirely free dating site. Millions of singles can post photos, write paragraphs, and exchange emails for no cost. The entire site is run out of the site owner’s apartment with no employees, helping to keep this site as a free service.

Perfectmatch.com – The best approach to find the one.

The site gained popularity from the 2005 movie “Must Love Dogs” in which the title characters meet with a little help from their online profiles. Perfect Match’s “Duet Compatibility System” takes into account the “whole” you: personality, life, lovestyle, values and preferences. Perfect Match allows members to search for matches on their own, while the site’s compatibility system also sends matches to online daters based on their responses to the “duet compatibility” questions. Members can post photos, write their essay, and search matches for free. Once they’re ready to communicate, they then choose a variety of membership types and payments.

Image: sxc.hu.

More on Internet dating and relationships:

• Get Your Ex Back
• How to Call or Email a Guy
• Get Your Online Profile in Order and Find Great Date Ideas – in one ebook