Everyone's ideas of a good online dating service is very different. The purpose of this page is to give you a rough guide to what is out there, so you don't feel like you missed a good opportunity. We would suggest visiting some these dating services to get a better feel for what they offer and if it's a good match for you. New dating services with new features pop up all the time, so it's worth hunting around.

What are the top online dating services?

• The three big dating web sites are Match.com, American Singles and Yahoo Personals. Being big is good in online dating - it will increase your chances of finding someone no matter where you live since they have millions of profiles listed. Most of these online dating web sites have at leaset 40% women, which is still pretty good when you have millions of users. Yahoo Personals is cheaper than Match.com, but Match.com is a slightly larger network. American Singles and Yahoo Personals have the best interfaces.

• Lavalife, Udate and Matchmaker are newer online dating web sites that are quickly growing. All these sites and the big three are pretty good about being international, but most of them are only covering English speaking countries, like Canada, Australia and the UK. Matchmaker has a great interface. Udate is leaning a little into the social networking side, which is very interesting. Udate is run by the same people that run Match.com.

• True is a new dating site that claims it will prosecute anyone that is married and they screen everyone that joins through a database of criminals. This is good news for people who have had problems with other online dating sites that have plenty of married people.

• eHarmony is a newer online dating web site that has tipped the ratio scale and has 60% women. They get these results primarily by screening the people before they are allowed to join through a huge test with over 400 questions. It's a little bit of a pain to sign up, because of all the questions, but you probably know the people that have signed up are serious about dating.

• Great Expectations is a online dating service that has been around for a while and is now available online. They pride themselves on pre-screening and qualifying people for their dating service. They claim that 1/3 of members of online dating web sites are married and think their system helps keep them out. Great Expectations is still a small dating service, but their staff actively help you find a match. Currently, they are only catering to the US.

• Nerve is a little more of an edgy online dating web site, where a lot of the profiles are more sexual. It seems to be more about sex and casual relationships than long term love. The profiles are also a little more humorous and fun to read. They also sponsor regular photo contest that are pretty erotic (verging on porn), have dating advice on sexual positions and personal essays.

• Perfect Match has designed personality test their members can take and which gives you another criteria to search for the perfect match on their site. It's interesting idea to improve your match for a date beyond the profile, but seems more like just a gimmick.

• There are also companies like CoupleMe and SingleMe that are part of a network of smaller online personals sites that share a common database. This keeps the number of listings high to compete against the bigger dating web sites.

• You can try the social networking web sites (sometimes called "friend of a friend" or FOAF sites), like Friendster, Tribe, Ryze and Orkut, which do matchmaking through your social network. This can be less intimidating, because some people sign up just to make friends or network for business. You don't feel like you are telling the world that you need a date, like in the dating only web sites. You also get more information about the person because you see they people they know. Even though Friendster is the largest, people are starting to switch to newer social network sites like Orkut.

• I would also not look over the smaller online dating web sites that have more specific interests. They are sometimes a much closer match to what you want. For example, Jdate with a focus on Jewish dating, Gay.com with a focus on gay dating, Single Democrat with a focus on matching up liberals, My Country Match with a focus on people who like country music.

• There are tons of new small online dating web sites or up and coming dating wbe sites which we still have not tried, like webdate, eLove, CupidUSA, Venus Rooms, First Class Singles, LovByte, True Beginnings and Date.com. We will be posting our findings soon.