Yahoo! Personals: Good Web Site, Quality Service

Dating sites are very common online - there are honestly hundreds there, trying their best to get your profile and have you pay their fees to meet people. It sounds cynical, but they're putting a price on love, and making you pay for it. How do you choose from the hundreds of dating sites online?

Well, Yahoo! thought that, too - and they decided to make their own dating service. But did they improve on the existing ones, or simply add more bad sites to the pile?

What Is The Site Like?

Yahoo! Personals is an easy to set up, easy to use site that lets you set up a full profile in little over five minutes, and offers an advanced search tool to find the right person for you.

Yahoo does things a bit differently when it comes to their dating - you can make a profile without a cost at all, and you can actually contact people with the free membership. This is nearly unheard of with any service that asks you to pay for an upgraded service, and it's a nice feature to let you know which profiles are real, and what are place holders.

You're also able to look at all of the members photos with a free membership, which is very nice - most sites don't let you, and it causes you to stumble along, not knowing if you're actually attracted to the person you're reading about.

Because the site is hooked up with Yahoo! itself, there is a large section on dating advice, and there are very few 'bugs' with the system. Basically, when you sign on to Yahoo!, you're aware that it's a good quality system.

Their features, however, are fairly bare - the basic emails, voice greetings, icebreaker messages.... there isn't much that's exciting, or innovated. But their range of people is pretty impressive.

Can You Actually Meet Singles?

With Yahoo! Personals, the sheer amount of profiles is extremely impressive - literally millions of profiles are on there, and the majority of them are real, active singles looking for a date, not the placeholder profiles you see so often on dating sites.

You also can find a lot of independent success stories on the web, from people who have met their husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend - and others who have met some great friends, and have had a lot of fun with the people they've encountered.

Bottom Line?

The bottom line is that Yahoo! Personals isn't a miracle site - you won't find your soul mate within a few minutes, and you won't be buying a feature-crammed membership that lets you do everything.

But you will have access to millions of profiles, of all genders, races, and backgrounds. It's a good, solid site, with quality service. Many have said it's pricier than others, but it's up to you to figure out if it's worth it or not.