Matchmaking Sites Reviews

Brand new to No1Reviews.com is our category of matchmaking sites. Matchmaking sites differ from traditional dating sites in the sense that they do all the work for you: with traditional dating sites you have to search for your own partner using the search tools available; with matchmaking sites a handful of matches are chosen for you based on extensive personality questionnaires that every member must complete when joining. This means that it is much more likely that your chosen partner will be compatible with you in terms of personality, character and life goals. This can really cut down the amount of time wasted on first dates with incompatible partners.

Matchmaking is a difficult business, and so only the largest and most established dating sites have ventured into this arena, which is why we could only find 5 sites that fit into this category...

1. Match Affinity (pictured above, a sister site of the hugely popular dating site Match.com)
2. Chemistry.com (also from the makers of Match.com)
3. eHarmony.com
4. Perfect Match
5. Dating Direct Affinity (sister site of the dating site Dating Direct)

For seasoned singles looking for long-term happiness who are tired of endless first-dates that don't pan out and who have tried and failed with traditional dating sites, matchmaking sites may well be what you've been waiting for. The networks listed above are the largest in the dating industry and have literally millions or even tens of millions of members. Check out our matchmaking site reviews on No1Reviews.com for more information and be sure to check out our Matchmaking Sites Buying Guide for advice on what to look for and what to avoid when choosing a matchmaking site.

Best of luck!

Guitar Jamz Review

Here at No1Reviews.com we're pleased to announce a newcomer to our Teach Yourself Guitar category. Straight in at No. 2 on our list and replacing the now discontinued Team Method Guitar, is Guitar Jamz.

Guitar Jamz is the new teach yourself guitar course by Marty Schwartz and is an online guitar course featuring over 640 guitar lessons, taking you from beginner to guitar legend from the comfort of your own home. You can also purchase supplementary DVDs to enable you to explore different guitar styles and techniques. These DVDs cover everything from beginner and intermediate to country and blues, with an additional set of 15 DVDs (plus 5 free bonus DVDs) dedicated exclusively to the blues.

The Guitar Jamz course has just topped the popular Jamorama guitar course in our top 10 list and comes just in after our long-standing #1 rated guitar course, Learn and Master Guitar. Check out the Guitar Jamz review on our site and let us know what you think of the course by leaving a user review.

Download your free introductory ebook from GuitarJamz.com today with no obligation and get started on the path to guitar god!

Muslim Dating Reviews

If you're a single Muslim looking for someone special, with excellent marriage potential, then our latest category of reviews of the best Muslim dating and matrimonial websites will be of interest to you.

We have surveyed the cyber-lanscape, comparing and contrasting the most popular Muslim dating and matrimonial websites, according to the following key criteria:

1. Chances of Getting a Date
2. Features
3. Quality / Size of Members' Photos
4.  Help Files / Technical Support
5.  Ease of Use / Navigation
6. Ease of Joining / Registration
7. Value for Money

Our No.1 Choice Award goes to Muslima.com, a website which is helping Muslim men and women build long-term and meaningful relationships many of which end in marriage. With an impressive range of features and hundreds of thousands of Muslim members, based in locations all around the world, Muslima.com is one of the most popular Muslim dating sites we have reviewed. It is also worth noting that Muslima is a member of the Cupid Media network, a group of more than 30 dating sites, renowned for offering good quality service in a range of specialised dating categories. You can read our full review of Muslima.com on No1Review.com and see exactly how it compares to its rivals for a range of criteria.

Qiran.com follows hot on the heels of Muslima.com, taking second place in our list of top 10 Muslim dating websites. Members of Qiran.com are very well-placed to find somone with whom they are wonderfully compatible, as the site boasts over 1 million active members, based all across the world. It also offers an excellent range of features for finding and interacting with compatible individuals. An in-depth review of Quiran.com can be found on No1Reviews.com, along with many other insightful reviews of Muslim dating and matrimonial websites.

Huge Improvements to No1Reviews.com!

No1Reviews.com is currently undergoing a facelift! With a new tabbed design, including tabs for the editor's review, user reviews, screenshots and videos on all our product review pages, we hope that No1Reviews.com will provide you with an enhanced user experience. Our user review system allows you to not only post your own ratings and reviews, but also comment on the reviews left by others and vote on the usefulness of those reviews.

Each of our review categories now also comes with a buying guide, giving you more information on the category as a whole and tips on what you should look for and what you should avoid when making your decision.

We've also moved the site to a brand new dedicated high-speed server and stream-lined much of the code that drives the site, making No1Reviews.com run faster than ever. 

From our point-of-view, No1Reviews.com will now be much easier to maintain, allowing us to spend more of our time keeping our reviews up-to-date and adding more and more categories and reviews in the future.

And that's not all - we also have many new and exciting features on the way, so stay tuned for more updates!

Zoosk Review

Zoosk.com is by far the most noteworthy of these new online dating sites. Launched in December 2007, it is the fastest growing social dating network/community, with a jaw-dropping database of 50 million members (A.K.A. 'Zooskers') based in 40 different countries around the world. As we noted in our recent review of Zoosk.com, online dating is a numbers game: the larger (and geographically broader) the database of members on a dating site, the greater your chances of finding someone, in your locale, that appeals to you. So a database of 50 million Zooskers based in 40 different countries around the world is an incredible achievement for a site which is a relative new-comer to the online dating scene. 

A key ingredients in Zoosk's success is the innovative way in which it integrates with social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5. In fact, currently, Zoosk is unique in allowing users to connect across multiple networks: a Facebook user can interact with a MySpace or Bebo user. By piggy-backing on these well-established social networks, it has quickly gained a large market share in online dating.

Zoosk.com also offers a virtual gift giving feature; a common idea in the social network domain but relatively uncommon amongst conventional online dating sites. According to Zoosk.com, in 2009, Zooskers exchanged more than 1 million virtual gifts. The revenue generated from this virtual economy must surely have contributed to Zoosk's success. 

Another factor which was central to Zoosk's rapid growth was its ability to raise millions of dollars from investors, much of which was then ploughed into advertizing campaigns to rival those of Match.com, eHarmony.com etc.

Zoosk Mobile is another great feature which allows Zooskers to remain in the loop, even when they're away from their computers. Zoosk.com certainly seems to represent a new breed of online dating site; one that is geared to the world of social networks which we now inhabit. 

Zoosk has an enviable 50:50 ratio between male and female members. At present, 65% are less than 30 years of age; 24% are between the ages of 30 & 39; and 11% are aged 40+. It is impossible to determine whether or not the 50 million Zooskers are as active as the members of other online dating sites such as Match.com, because Zoosk.com does not, currently, provide a facility for seeing when exactly someone was "last online". This is one of the few shortcomings of Zoosk.com, but it is a significant one in our view. It's pointless trying to find your perfect match in a 'ghost' community of people who signed up with Zoosk.com to see what it was all about, but now rarely use it. We're hopeful that this shortcoming can be addressed by the creators of Zoosk.com because it is undoubtedly a site with incredible potential.

Read our full review of Zoosk for more information.

Mainstream Online Dating Reviews - Updated & Extended

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UK Dating Reviews Updated & Extended

Online dating sites continue to grow in popularity, with new sites emerging all the time. With this in mind,  we revisited our reviews of the best UK Dating Sites on the web to see if there were any notable additions to the field. Since we last surveyed the field, there have been some mergers  and acquisitions, (e.g. Date.co.uk has been taken over by the popular international dating site, Spark.com); there have also been two new additions to the field, MakeFriendsOnline.com and MySingleFriend.com, both of which have stormed into our top ten listings.

 

As you'll see in our MakeFriendsOnline.com review, this site ticks lots of boxes for UK daters. It has a decent membership base in the UK, lots of added value, user-friendly features, and ways of getting the membership involved. For instance, Make Friends Online has a novel feature called Mutual Match which is particularly useful. If two members both show an interest in the other, the site emails both members to let them know that a Mutual Match exists. If only one member shows interest in the other, or if neither shows interest, then there are no email alerts. So it's a useful way of identifying compatibility between members, without anyone feeling like they've been rejected. One of the key selling points of MakeFriendsOnline is that fact that it makes some advanced features available to Standard members. We rated the site highly for facets such as activity/involvement, contact options (especially for Standard members), and the quality of profiles and photos. It would have ranked more highly in our top ten listings if its membership base were larger than 1.5 million. Still, MakeFriendsOnline.com is growing fast, so it may well move up in our rankings on our next update. 

As our review of MySingleFriend.com suggests, this new addition is making waves with its lateral thinking approach to online dating. The site has recognized that we all have a few single friends who are amazing people, with lots to offer a partner, but these friends of ours haven't yet managed to find their perfect match, through no real fault of their own. If you're single, then why not ask a trustworthy friend, who knows you very well, to sign up at MySingleFriend.com and write a testimonial about you (hopefully glowing and preferably witty). It's highly likely that your friend's testimonial will appeal to other single members on My Single Friend and you can take things from there. You may discover some great attributes or talents which you never realised you had or never considered valuable (e.g. your ability to bake delicious cakes, organise fabulous parties or always remember your friends' birthdays, anniversaries, etc.). MySingleFriend.com is definitely something to try out if you're interested in online dating but want to try something a bit different.

Our No. 1 Choice Award was retained by UK.Match.com, the UK's largest dating site, with close to 5 million members based in the UK. The size of its membership base is one of the main factors accounting for its success.  A recent poll of 1,000 former members of UK.Match.com revealed that, "every day the equivalent to one hundred and sixty members leave the site as couples." Those are impressive results. Another important factor which has contributed to the growth of UK.Match.com is the range of powerful search features it offers to its members. As you can see in our review of UK.Match.com, these include novel features such as MatchWords which allows members to add up to 50 searchable keywords with which they can be associated. So if you're after someone with Celtic heritage, for instance, all you need to do is use the MatchWords search feature then view the results for which that word has matches. This is a quick and easy way to find people with specific (and perhaps quirky) characteristics or associations which may not appear in a standard profile. You can save your searches too, making it easy to search for the same features in future. Match.com UK also offer polls, sex tips and other relationship advice to enhance your online dating experience and help you find your perfect match. It is not surprising that they remain in pole position in our UK Dating Sites category. They have achieved a critical mass in terms of membership and have earned a reputation for achieving great results.