Yahoo! Personals

Packages and Features

All of Yahoo! Personals’ online dating services are bundled into one package, so that all you need to do is choose the length of time you wish to enroll. Yahoo! Personals also lets you enroll for free and take advantage of their search features. Payment is required if you wish to contact other members.

Feature	Paid Membership	Free Trial
Search profiles
Receive communication
Send communication
Send icebreakers		(one free icebreaker is permitted)
See who has viewed you
See who has saved you
Save searches
Instant Messaging
Receive match suggestions

Pricing

A notable benefit of Yahoo! Personals is that you can create profiles and search Yahoo!’s database unreservedly without paying. Yahoo! Personals offers only one service plan that can be purchased for 1 month, 3 months or 6 months. In the past, the site had offered a 6 month guarantee. However, this offer was discontinued in September 2009. If you had paid for a 6 month membership before September 16, 2009 you are still eligible to claim this guarantee if you’ve met Yahoo!’s terms and conditions but haven’t found a suitable partner yet.

The site’s pricing structure works as follows:

Like most other dating sites, Yahoo! Personals will automatically renew your subscription unless you intentionally cancel it. Yahoo! Personals accepts payment through Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express and PayPal.

Upon registration you can take advantage of 7 days of free membership through which you can test out all of Yahoo! Personals’ features and determine whether you want to continue paying for the service. You must submit your payment information in order to use the free trial and you will be billed automatically if you don’t cancel your subscription before the 7 days are complete.

Membership Base

• Approximately 9 million members
• Serves both heterosexual and gay singles
• Has a high percentage of members under age 35
• Offers 13 different sites in different regions of the world so that you can find someone from your country or specific area

How Yahoo! Personals Works

Yahoo! Personals gives you the power to search for your ideal partner and allows you to see if you’re a good fit by telling you what other members are looking for in a mate.

Match.com presents each profile in a clear, concise way and also tells you which aspects of your profile match the profile that you’re interested in.

Example of a Profle on Yahoo! Personals

If someone strikes your interest you have the option of sending an icebreaker or an email. Yahoo! Personals helps you send an email by showing you some questions that the person has chosen to get to know you better.

Icebreaker form

Yahoo! Personals email contact form

Yahoo! Personals offers some of the most diverse search features of any online dating site, by allowing you to perform keyword-specific searches or to customize your search based on any criteria listed in the profile. You can also see who has saved you and who has viewed your profile and contact those members if you so desire.

Search criteria

Yahoo! Personals lets you view your results either as a Basic View or as a Gallery, so that you can enjoy the format that is most comfortable for you.

Basic View

Gallery View

Yahoo! Personals also offers two compatibility matching options, I Match and We Match. The I Match system presents you with singles that are looking for people like you based on the information they listed in their profile. The We Match system offers you a list of other singles who have posted profiles similar to yours.  There are times, however, when these systems fail to provide local suitable matches. In this case, Yahoo! Personals will offer you the ability to view ‘close’ matches, which are profiles of singles who have criteria that is reasonably similar to the criteria you stipulated in your profile. Interestingly, there may also be times that no ‘close’ matches are available.

Registration

Yahoo! Personals has a short and painless registration process that includes the 3 sections: About Me, About My Match, and Submit. The first two sections contain multiple choice questions relating to appearance, lifestyle, home life and personality, so that you can answer the questions about yourself and stipulate what you are looking for in a mate. When choosing qualities for your mate you can also note whether these preferences are ‘must haves’ or whether they are simply ‘nice to have’. The About My Match section also includes a ‘Tell Me About’ subsection through which you can choose questions that will serve as a springboard to start a conversation with potential matches. In the Submit section you will be asked to provide a short free-response about yourself as well as a header for your profile. The entire registration process can be completed within 10 minutes. Your profile will be reviewed by the Yahoo! Personals team and should be searchable within 24 hours.

About Me

About My Match

Tell Me About

Submit a Profile

Yahoo! Personals allows you to choose “I’ll tell you later” for every question about yourself, a feature which can be useful if you want to keep certain information private (such as your income or whether you have children). While you may enjoy this added privacy, you may also find it frustrating to sift through thousands of profiles on Yahoo! Personals, many of which are similarly incomplete.

Customer Support

Yahoo! Personals offers customer support by email only. They have different submission pages for technical support, billing issues and customer feedback. I submitted a question on a Monday at 7:55am EST

Customer Support Form

I received an auto-response within 1 minute saying that Yahoo! Personals does not provide technical support and that I should try and find an answer in their help section.

Customer Support Email Response

Summary

Yahoo! Personals is one of the most affordable online dating services, but you may get what you pay for. The site’s compatibility matching services leave much to be desired and the site’s dating advice section is similarly lacking. Still, if you want to search for your own match or are looking for online dating with enhanced privacy options, Yahoo! Personals offers endless possibilities.

Positive Features

• Extensive search and sorting features
• Quick registration
• Allows you to search profiles and contact others even when your profile is hidden

Negative Features

• Flash ads create a distracting interface
• Ineffective compatibility matching
• No customer service by phone
• No mobile online dating services
• No technical support available