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Google Online Dating - No Kidding
Many of you may remember Google’s April Fools Day joke about Google Romance… Well it looks like that joke has become a new search feature on Google.com.
As I was doing some competitive research on Google for some of my keywords, I discovered that Google now has a geo-targeted search feature to help you find local singles. Here is a screenshot from my search for “Austin Dating”:
It appears like Google is scraping profiles from websites like LoveAccess.com, Date.com, and other popular dating sites and showing them in the results. I also noticed that Google is using GoogleBase to pull in results.
You can refine your search by age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and more. Google also allows you to type in keywords to get more detailed results.
It looks like the search results for these keyword searches are being dominated by just a few players, who seem to be getting a lift from their listings in GoogleBase. Many of the sites listed in the online dating results pages are not showing up in the regular searches for the same keywords. This could be a good opportunity for other dating sites who have struggled to achieve top rankings for online dating keywords.
After spending some time doing some test searches, I have concluded that Google Online Dating has a long way to go before their search functionality can catch up to industry leaders like Yahoo Personals and Match.com. I also fail to see the added value that Google is providing to searchers by scraping results from a handful of dating sites.
Perhaps Google wants to become an online dating affiliate… they have been looking for ways to diversify.
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Did you find the date you were looking for?
Not seeing it. I wonder if they are testing it, or if you have personalized search on or something.
“doing some competitive research on Google for some of my keywords”
Yeah, sure. Whatever you say :-;
Thick!! Tell them it needs to be thick, Jeremy. Otherwise Google will see it as just another thin…well, nevermind.
Hi Jeremy,
I know they pull data from Google Base from time to time (Google still plays around with it doing some random testing), but your screen shot looks more like a result pulled from Google Co-Op although Co-Op does not allow user input as far as I know.
I bet you were logged in. Who knows if it was a mash-up of multiple of their services Maps, Co-Op, Personalized, Base. Google is currently testing tons of stuff. Were you logged in?
If yes, are you using Co-Op or Personalized? Anything related to dating sign up for?
They might also just test stuff based on past queries. It sounds like you do stuff with dating site so I bet Google believes that it is “your thing”, if you are logged in, while doing your searches to check whats going on in your niche hehe.
I found out that the results were being pulled from Google Base. I wasn’t logged in when doing these searches, I just think Google is displaying them somewhat randomly.
Try these searches:
“Black Personals”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=black+personals&btnG=Google+Search
“Houston Personals”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=houston+personals&btnG=Search
Google Base represents a huge opportunity right now for search engine optimizers. Only a few people really get it, and they seem to be dominating specialized results such as these.
I know, I dumped a few feeds in there myself and to dump a lot more is on my to-do list.
Froogle is now also fed by Google base, no more proprietary system. Google is consolidating stuff and inter-connecting which requires the standardization of the data formats…. GData.
I guess Google co-op will also join the mix and become the “personalized Google Base”. BTW. The links did not show anything for me, but I know that this means nothing.
I probably hit different data center than you anyway. Things pop-up and go and pop-up again. So far its uncertain where it is going exactly, but you can make already some very educated guesses based on the developments during the last months.
Google Coop is interesting, but I think much too complicated for the average user. I think Yahoo is going to kill Google in the area of human influenced search. With acquisitions of del.icio.us and Yahoo Answers, I think Yahoo is cooking up something good… time will tell
Making it a bit more complicated, especially at the beginning has its good and bad sides. Good is, that not everybody jumps onto the Band Wagon which makes competition less crowded, the bad thing is, that not everybody jumps onto the Band Wagon which might makes it fail and enter history as another experiment.
Wow this is great I’m a huge google fan. If anything they will help raise the bar of the whole sector.