The ideal way to use this site.. reviews

I decided to post a step by step guide on the ideal way to use this site. This is to ensure that you have a quick and pleasing experience when searching for an Online Dating Site.

Read the reviews of each dating site and apps posted
(Listed under Reviews on the left).

Pick 1 or 2 sites you liked, to visit.
Create a profile on the dating service of your choice.

Complete some searches for compatible members on the dating site or app. This is to verify that there are people you would like to contact that live in your area.

If the service meets your expectation you could then join as a full member, or if not, check out the next site you liked.
If possible, please return to Dating Sites Reviews to post a comment or suggestion about the dating site or app on the review so others may benefit from your experience.

A Guideline to how a Review is created.

The first thing I do when I want to write a review is to join the dating site in question. From here I explore every corner and aspect of the website. I go through the entire process that someone would do to join a online personals site, search for the perfect partner and contact other members.

What I want in a review and what I felt most people want in a review is something that is quick and easy to read, is setup in an organized manner and has the positive and negative points of the dating service marked and are easy to find.

From this I decided on having an introduction of the dating site that include such things as when the company started, how many members it has and in general, what sticks out which makes it a good dating site to join.

After the introduction, I then list any Awards we have given the dating site over the years. For more information on our Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards check out our Awards topic. If a dating site has not received an award, this section will not be visible.

This section of the review is marked by this icon:

After the Awards, I then list the major positive and negative features of the dating site in point form. These points may not only be my observations but also general observations from singles who have posted their opinions on the internet.

The section is marked by this icon for Positive Features of the dating site:
and this icon for Negative Features:

After the positive and negative features, the At a Glance details are listed which includes the number of members, lowest cost per month and any restrictions on the free trial of the dating site. We also include any Related Categories the dating site belongs too. The Average User Reviews & Ratings are also listed along with the number of user reviews available to read. From here you can click View to read the user submitted reviews.

Following the above sections, I include point form categories of the other important parts of an online personals site. Reviews will include most of the listed categories below as long as they fit the dating site being reviewed and I have information available for it. These include:

Free Membership - Here I describe what is included in the Free and Pay memberships as well as what information is required in creating a profile.

Costs - The available types of memberships and how much each membership costs and what upgraded features do you get. On average one month costs between $30 and $50.

Paying for a membership per month usually will cost more than buying a membership for a term.

Relationship Types - What relationship types the personals site supports. As example Heterosexual, Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual.

Relationship Status - What relationship status is available, as example can married or separated people (but not yet divorced) join?

Looking For - Different communities and types of relationships singles are looking for which may exist on the site like "Just Friends" or "Long Term Relationship". Related to Relationship Types category.
Regions - What countries can sign up for a membership.

Viewing & Communication Tools - This category use to be called "How to View and Communicate with Members". Here you can find how you as a member can fine information about other members (ie. Photos, voice, etc...). As well as how you can communicate with members (ie. Chat, email, etc...)

Search By - How and what you can search for, to bring up matching profiles of members.

Success Stories - Here are listed one or more success stories from the reviewed dating site. These stories are usually supplied by the site and are confirmed they are from real members of the dating site.

Items of Note - This category maybe included if anything stands out on the Dating Site that is different from the majority of other sites.

Awards - This category maybe included if any Awards (other than our own) have been given to the dating site.

Other Information - This category maybe included if other information needs to be included in the review that doesn't fall within the other categories.
I hope this helps in explaining the process I use to create a review.

Why are there more Negative Dating Reviews than Positive?

We have a fair number of user submitted reviews on our site and I've notice lately, there are a greater percentage of negative reviews of dating services than positive.

Why are the user ratings of the majority of dating sites so low? There are several reasons, the main one being is, more singles tend to search out dating service reviews when they have had a bad experience. They want to meet other people that have had similar dating problems and share their story. These people tend to take the time to write out a review to warn other singles.

Singles who have had good experiences with a dating service usually spend their time at the dating site, not looking for dating reviews. They usually don't see the need to find review sites to post their experiences. What they tend to do is either notify the dating site itself and comment on their positive experience (hence the "Success Stories" dating services post on their sites) or they mention it directly to friends and family.

The other thing I found is a fair number of negative reviews tend to be written by younger men. Younger men have greater competition when dating online since older men's dating range tends to be from their age too sometimes as much as 20 years younger. This obviously conflicts with younger men. Older men are usually more successful (been working longer) which also adds to the problem. These facts can cause younger men greater frustration when dealing with online dating.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't complain, there is a lot of things dating sites could do better. It just so happens that some of our reviewers find our site because they have had bad experiences. We have started an Ad campaign to hopefully lure in more people to post positive experiences of dating services to balance things out.

Your own Online Dating Sites Rating and Review.

You are now able to add your own reviews and ratings to the sites we have reviewed on Dating Sites Reviews. We decided to add this feature to allow singles to voice their own opinions on a particular dating service since everyone has had their own experiences.

When you visit our review page for a dating service you will notice an average rating (displayed as stars and out of 5) located under the title of the review at the top of the page. This average is based on just user submitted rating and reviews for the particular dating site you are viewing. You will have two options presented to you by the average rating. You can either view each user submitted rating and review for the particular dating service or you can add your own.

A dating site rating and review is made up of:

Title - The title of your review. It is best to make this as descriptive as possible.
Author Name - If you have a user account setup that will be used, else you can enter a nickname for yourself
Location - Specify where you live. Don't put your exact location but your city, state/province and country will be fine. If you are uncomfortable listing your city please at least put the country you live in.

The Rating - This is out of 5 with 5 being the best possible rating.
Positive Points - List the top positive points of the dating service in your opinion.
Negative Points - List the top negative points of the dating service if there are any.
Bottom Line - List either the major point you are trying to make in your review (if you would recommend joining or not).
Review - Where you can write your experiences about the dating service.

When submitted all reviews are reviewed by us to ensure that the rating and review is informative and that no SPAM or profanity got through our automated filters. The rating and reviews are the property of the person who submitted them. Dating Reviews is not responsible for what is said in them. It may take up to 7 business days for us to go over a submitted review (usually less). You can only submit one review for a particular dating service. If your review is rejected right away when you submitted it because of the SPAM filter please Contact AFF and send us your review and information and we will manually add it to AFF site. Sometimes our SPAM filter is a little to aggressive but unfortunately it is needed in today's internet world.

When viewing the reviews you have the option of viewing them by date created. You can also specify if a particular review was helpful or not. If you would like to view the top rated sites based on users rating and reviews please check out our Top Dating Services in AFF

Our Reviewed Dating Sites and Apps Minimum Criteria

This article contains information regarding our reviewed dating services minimum criteria. This means we won't consider reviewing the site and/or app unless it meets most of the objectives of the points below. Once an online dating service evolves enough to pass the criteria, we will commence a review. Of course, this may mean the dating site or app still does not necessarily get added to our review site. If our detailed review process reveals a dating service is below are standards, we will not include it. The points below list the major criteria our experts consider before we review an online dating service:

Our first major criteria is the number of members the service has. This number of course is not set in stone and depends on the dating niche the service is a part of. We would expect a dating site/app that caters to seniors to have fewer members than a more general oriented mainstream dating site/app for singles. A number of new dating sites have complained about this criterion but, we cannot recommend a dating service in good conscience to our readers that can't offer actual matches to their members.

The next criteria we look at is the business practices of the dating service. Some of the "lower class" dating sites can make it extremely difficult to cancel a membership. You can find some of them renewing subscriptions without the expressed permission of the person. These fraudulent sites also will not offer refunds for any reason or within a certain time period.

This criterion is similar to the last one and deals with the number of member complaints found. These complaints are usually regarding; the site not working properly, membership problems, or poor customer service. If you search online, you can find numerous complaints about almost any company or product. We take a look at the scope of the complaints found when compared to other popular dating services. If there are too many and they all revolve around one issue, we then take notice.

Customer Support is especially important. You cannot leave members to flounder about the dating site themselves if they are having problems. Detailed FAQ or Help Center, Email, Online Support Chat and Toll-Free Phone Service are important tools to help members navigate online dating. A dating service needs at least 2 of these tools to even be considered. Hours of service are taken into consideration along with the response time to email and phone inquiries.

Handling of Abuse is another important criterion. Members need to feel safe online and if another member cannot seem to take no for an answer there needs to be ways of dealing with this. From notifying the dating service of this members inappropriate behavior, to ways of blocking members from contacting (email, IM and chatting), or even seeing your profile online. These safety features must be easy to find and use. There must also be a tool to report inappropriate and fake profiles.
This set of criteria will evolve as we re-evaluate our position, and as dating services add in new features in which we will need to consider.

If you do not see a review for a dating service on our site, in most cases it may not be worth joining.

Every year or so we revaluate the services and products we have reviewed. This is done to update the review with any new changes that might have happened including new features, price changes, etc. Over the years some services and products get better, and some unfortunately get worse. Instead of removing the services and products that have declined in quality to below our minimum standards we decided to move them to our Not Recommended category. This can happen in two ways. The dating site or app quality of service could have declined and because of this, stopped meeting one of our criteria above. The second way is we added a new criterion in which the service or product did not meet, and we deemed important enough to move the product or service to the Not Recommended category.

Having a list of minimum dating service review criterion helps solve a couple of problems. Most people when visiting Dating Reviews are only interested in reviews of dating services that work and can offer them a good chance of meeting their match. If we included sites we did not like, there would be hundreds of sites on our list and the good ones would be lost in the shuffle. Plus, why waste people's time in reading reviews of services and products that hardly have any redeeming qualities? People rather be reading about online dating services and products that actually work. The only decisions they then need to make is about what type of dating service they wish to join, and what features are most important to them.