According to surveys, 84% of online singles prefer online dating services for finding "The One" and building long term relationships. In the light of this fact, the question is: Are the best online dating services, the biggest sites where you can search for your match from millions of profiles, or in other words where you cannot find anyone actually interested in your profile?

In the huge pool of internet dating services, there are very decent dating sites with tens of thousands of members rather than millions of profiles, giving much better services than bigger dating sites, who are only concerned with their marketing campaign and their sales.

So how can you choose the best dating site for you?

Practice makes perfect. Although i don't recommend you to use free dating services, for practicing and understanding what you can get out of online dating and why you're looking for your mate in online dating, can be a good practice.

Why don't I recommend a completely free dating services?

Because completely free dating sites are places where scammers hide and look for their hunts to fall in to their evil traps. Finding genuine profiles is two times harder than cheap dating sites with less profiles.

So after you decide what you're looking for, you can take one of the following actions as your next step:

If you only wanted to try or have fun with online dating, there is no point for you to register a paying service and you can try different free dating sites keeping scammers in mind. But if your intentions are serious, if you really want to meet a genuine person and start dating with her/him, then you must find a middle sized, cheap dating site with plenty of good features. Being middle sized, the dating service in concern, will try to impress you and other members with flashy features for building a reputation and you'd be able to find your match within the middle sized pool of profiles more easily and effectively.

So what features should you look for in the dating service of your choice?

- Privacy. Your details should be kept confidential from other members. You can check privacy terms of any decent dating site from their terms and conditions page.

- Chat and messaging service. Chat services in dating sites are really useful. You can get advantages of instant messaging with complete confidentiality which is better than using online messengers which reveal your email address, immediately.

- Statistics and reports. Statistics and reports of you, and other members who are interested in you could be very handy for you. You can keep track of people who've sent you message, viewed your profile. You can then, get in contact with people who're actually interested.

- Local dating option. A dating service with a distance searching option for your country could be a big plus as you can find your matches in your local area and you'd not have to go thousands of miles to meet your match.

Besides good features, getting opinions from decent review sites and friends could be a good idea. You'll have an idea of the site you're joining, You can know if the site you choose, is a reputable and/or a genuine dating site with genuine profiles.

In the big sea of dating sites, finding the one which suits your needs the best is not easy. So many factors are in concern but once you've found it, it's easier to find love, than you think.

Statistics show that online dating really works and that many dates turn into serious relationships or marriages. All you need to do is to know what you want from online dating and decide which dating site to recruit as your assistant.