“More ways to search.  And to find.”  That’s stated near the top of the Search page on Match.com (one of many really ugly pages on their site).  That sums up their approach to connecting people — by providing many different options to filter your search.  Are more options good?  That depends…are they necessary?  I found some of these to be useless and sometimes poorly conceived.:

1. Mutual Matches: This search shows people with similar traits and interests as you, with no regard to what your criteria are except age and location.  I found that most (and all on the first page) were not compatible with me because of personality, race, height, or body type.
2. Reverse Matches: This search shows you the people for whom you rank high in their search results.  It sounds like an interesting idea but in practice I ran into the same problems as the Mutual Match because my criteria is not a factor.
3. Quick (age/location) Search: I found this too simple to be effective.  Not only was I still finding many women incompatible with my criteria but in many cases I was completely incompatible with them!
4. Custom Searches: I found these to be the most useful searches because I could state my criteria for a match.  However it appears that Match.com treats at least some of this criteria as suggested criteria — some of the women in my results didn’t meet my basic race and body type criteria.
5. Search By Username: I guess this might be useful…1% of the time.
6. Search By Keyword and Search By matchWord: These are 2 different searches but I’ll tackle them together because by any basic tenet of design and common sense they should be combined.  “Search By Keyword” searches for a word or phrase in the text fields of other people’s profiles, so it could be useful for traits or interests not covered by the other fields.  You can also enter “matchWords” which are basically keywords or tags that you can list on your profile to, again, cover traits or interests not already covered.  So you can see why these 2 searches would make better sense when combined.  Also the only other filters available are age and location so it wasn’t very useful.

To summarize, the main problems I found with these searches are:

1. Neglect of my required criteria: I believe most people have a few basic requirements besides age and location (for example: race, parent vs. non-parent, height).  Match.com either ignores this concept or treats it as a low priority.
2. Too many search types: Many of these search types could have been combined into 1.  But given Match.com’s piss-poor job with the design of their interface and the workflow within their site, they probably would have only made it more complicated.
3. Unnecessary search types: I admit that looking up people for whom you match (even if they don’t match you) is interesting but not useful enough to be one of the premier features.

Do you use Match.com?  Share your success and failures in the comments.  What features do you like or not like?