Toronto Dating Scene

iChurch Dating Site Review: iChurch.com

Toronto Dating — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:01:36 +0000

The reviews of iChurch Christian dating site are in. After we posted about iChurch scam whereby they charge you $1.95 to ‘validate’ yourself (you can’t even see the photos on dating profiles until you ‘validate’ yourself) but then automatically ‘renew’ that with a charge of $149.97 (a three month membership) if you don’t cancel in time.

What happens when you ask about the iChurch.com validation fee before paying it? More than one commenter told us that iChurch simply removes your account without answering the question at hand.

What happens when you do get dinged by iChurch for the three month membership? Good luck getting them to respond to you. No response via email or getting return calls from voice mail messages left. And if you miraculously do get a hold of them? iChurch gives you the runaround. Alternatively, they’ll just say ‘no’.

People are even calling for a class-action lawsuit

Who runs iChurch.com? If you try to see the ownership via their domain name ichurch.com, it’s private. Why would a legitimate company keep their domain contact information private?

How’s that for an iChurch.com dating site review? Two words: Stay away.

Single on Valentine’s? Try These Tips of Survival

Toronto Dating — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:18:23 +0000

CityNews did up a series of Valentine’s Day themed video spots for those who are single for Valentine’s Day. Here are some of the tips…

Survive Valentine’s Day:

celebrate with your single friends;
girls night out: celebrate where couples likely aren’t going to gather (karaoke, dive bars, etc.);
girls night in: mix drinks and rent light-hearted movies.

Get Out There:

try speed dating — be open minded;
try online dating — post a lot of pictures, be honest, use spell check;
shy guys: try hypnotism to relax yourself

Do’s and Don’ts on a Date:

don’t complain or be negative;
women should yield a bit and not try to take control;
don’t talk about money or salaries;
don’t be too serious in terms of ‘looking for a relationship’;
keep it light!.

Watch it for yourself, below:

Dating Affiliates Spamming Friendster Pages

Toronto Dating — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:58:43 +0000

I’ve seen this more than once when do search analysis for the online dating industry: Dating site affiliates creating Friendster accounts under names that are search terms and filling the profile with links and image ads for dating sites (mostly smut-type ‘dating’ sites). They pages rank decently well as they are on the Friendster.com domain. The title tag and URLs are SEO optimized as they take the profile name you provide. Thus, using an SEO-friendly Friendster account name ranks half decently well for some dating search terms. Just the latest in the dating affiliate spam battle.

Niche Dating Sites Testimonial Mix Up: Black = Arab?

Toronto Dating — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:53:16 +0000

Niche dating sites are, for the most part, owned by companies that run multiple niche sites. Sometimes those templates get mixed up, I guess, such as in this case, below, where Soul Singles ‘Your Black Community’ has a section on their homepage announcing the testimonials of those who met on ArabLounge.com – Huh?

Mate1.com Ads Showing for Smut Terms on Google AdWords

Toronto Dating — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:31:35 +0000

So I’m reading about how ‘The Beaver’, Canada’s History Magazine changed it’s name away from ‘The Beaver’ (to allow their email get through adult spam filters) and thus I do a quick search for ‘beaver’ in Google to see what comes up immediately. There’s one paid search ad showing for me (in Canada): Mate1.com’s AdWords ad stating they have ‘Dirty Girls in your Area’. As soon as I began writing this post I was thinking maybe it’s the work of an affilate. Click on the link and the URL includes AFFID=30655-G-38&sid=7a3844e94cdb9493 so this could be the work of an affiliate, and not Mate1.com itself. Of course, knowing the typical content of a Mate1.com ad, I’m sure they would be all over this keyword themselves, if they had thought of it.

How Can I Get My Girlfriend To…

Toronto Dating — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 01:16:34 +0000

Ah, yes: What guys want their girlfriends to do and what girls want their boyfriends to do are quite different, at least in the order (no shock, really). According to Google, the search phrases starting with ‘how can I get my girlfriend to…’ and ‘how can I get my boyfriend to…’ produce different results. Women want a proposal; guys want, ummm, something else.

If you were taken by your date to a party where you knew no one, how would you respond?

Toronto Dating — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:18:19 +0000

This question, by far from my experience, is the most chosen among women to ask men during one of the ‘Guided Communication’ steps of eHarmony:

eHarmony Question: ‘If you were taken by your date to a party where you knew no one, how would you respond?’

eHarmony Possible Answers:
- stay close to my date, letting him/her introduce me
- find a spot at the back bar and relax alone, letting him/her work the room
- strike out on my own, introducing myself and making friends
- I would ask my partner if I could skip this particular event
- (your own answer)

So, from that I would assume that this aspect is very important for most women. My guess is they’re hoping for response ‘C’ which is that their man would have no problem introducing himself to others at a party instead of clinging to his date. Your thoughts on this eHarmony question?

Free Dating Advice Videos: Useless and Just for SEO

Toronto Dating — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:50:52 +0000

eHow is a site that basically finds out what people search for (easy to snag that data) and then creates (usually crap) content to grab page views from those searches. Ninety-eight percent (give or take?!) of the time their content is completely useless and you can tell it was thrown together as quickly and cheaply as possible (their model) without really providing anything quality. It’s basically an SEO play to get page views and, of course, earn ad revenue. They outsource production of the content for a minimal cost and hence you get back the quality described above. When it comes to the online dating industry, they’re all over those search terms as well, creating content for dating-related searches. While their written ‘content’ is usually quite poor, their videos are even worse. Check out these doozies created by Donna Barnes, a ‘Life & Dating Coach’. If I created these I’d be horribly embarrassed (Donna Barnes likes the paycheque I guess). eHow likely pays her per video and, as such, she throws them together as quickly as possible with pretty much zero research other than doing a quick Google search. In fact, the standard SEO pages that most dating sites employ (geographic, mostly) she totally falls for. From what I can tell, what she says is very carefully scripted to use the proper SEO-friendly phrases – as the video transcript is written below the video. Enjoy these butchered videos that pretty much provide zero useful content and show ‘dating coach’ Donna Barnes getting duped by the many ‘SEO’ pages that dating sites produce.

Get out there, singles and enjoy those ‘online dating services in Colorado’!

Meet Sexy Russians in Toronto (Not Persians)

Toronto Dating — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 01:08:50 +0000

The other day someone found Toronto Dating Scene by searching for ‘where to meet sexy persians in toronto‘. I ran the same search as I was curious to see how we rank for that term. Turns out Google makes another suggestion. According to the popular search engine, Persians in Toronto are not that sexy – you must have been searching to find sexy Russians in Toronto. There you have it. (Yes, there’s an explanation for why Google shows what it does – not that I’ll get into that here, but it’s interesting none the less).

Sexy Iranians For Jewish Singles

Toronto Dating — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:41:00 +0000

It seems the contextually ‘relevant’ AdSense ads on Jewish Web site Haaretz.com are showing Iranian Personals ads. Not just any Iranians, though, ’sexy’ ones. Jewish singles are encouraged to ‘Meet Iranians today! Search Persian photos, chat & more’. While I’ll say the world would be a better place if this type of singles matching was common (can’t we all just get along!), I highly doubt many Jewish singles will find this ad very relevant in their search for their mate. There was also an AdSense ad for ‘Fly Cheap to Iran’ so, there you go: Once you’ve met your Iranian match online you can fly there to meet him or her – for cheap! Back to the ads themselves, I can see how they would show up, as the article on Haaretz.com discussed Iran, however you would think Google had better targeting by now. If Haaretz.com was smart they would put these type of ads in their ‘do not show’ list. Although, looking at the screenshot below, that maybe would just mean more ‘uranium’ ads! Ok, Jewish and Iranian singles, go match up – especially the ’sexy’ ones!