Hacking Match.com's Search Recommendations

After a few times of this happening it cannot be a coincidence.  Plus, it makes perfect business sense for them to do this.  Okay, so that we are all on the same page, here's a little background:

One of the absolute key things to notice when searching Match.com profiles is the user's activity date.  There are various boilerplate answers put forth here by the server that range from "Online Now" to "Active over 3 weeks". As I've stated before, if they haven't been online in more than three days: warning.  If it has been past two weeks forget it entirely.  The reason is that they are likely no longer members of Match.com. 

That's correct.  Match.com basically does not purge its database of old users/expired profiles. Or, it may purge them after a very long time, but either way the results are the same.  There's no way of knowing from this end, but it doesn't really matter.  Essentially, you can view scores of viewable profiles for women that you will have no chance of meeting whatsoever. There are over 100 in my search filter alone.  What happens is, when you e-mail or wink at an expired profile, Match.com sends that (former) member a teaser e-mail stating that someone is interested in them.  Then, when they log back into their expired account to see who it is that's interested, Match.com forces them to renew their membership to find out.  The chances that a woman will pay $35 just to read your e-mail or see who winked are basically zero.  Unfortunately, I bet that it works far more often in the reverse situation where some poor schmuck will fork over the coin for a shred of female attention.  In my opinion, it's pretty disingenuous on the part of Match.com and drastically inflates the "pool of daters" by including those that, again, you effectively have no chance of meeting.

(Sidebar: don't ever fucking wink at anyone on Match.com! It shows a lack of confidence, which is a game-killer.)

So, here's the brilliant part for them: right after your membership is canceled or expired they give your profile highest preference in searches.  What that means is that women are more likely to read your profile and therefore more likely to contact you when you are no longer a member - forcing you to renew your membership out of curiosity, which is a very powerful motivator. Or, if you happen to log back in after expiration to see if anyone has looked at your profile you will see a sudden spike in interest/profile views.  It's fucking genius on their part.

This has now happened to me several times now and it seems to be accurate.  This month, after expiration, I had the same number of page views in two days that I had in the prior three weeks.  Since contacting women that have already viewed your profile represent the highest chances of success, I now have a bunch of new leads.

So, how to use this to your advantage?  Simple: stay on the shortest term plan, do not auto-renew and let it expire each time.  After it expires, wait three to five days and renew.  Yes, this will increase the cost versus using a long-term plan, but it will vault you ahead of your competition, which represents a great value.  Bonus: it's not obvious to anyone that you're doing this, thereby not showing any desperation (another game killer). Since you are competing with hundreds of other guys for female attention, this is a huge win.  Hypothetically, if there are ten guys she's interested in on the first three pages of search, she won't bother going any farther.  Be one of the first on search and you'll be one of the first to score.