Match.com Questions and Answers
In my last post I covered questions on winks at Match.com. This time I wanted to cover other types of questions that have sent people here.
How Do I Hide My Profile on Match.com?
What Happens When I Hide My Profile?
Can I Hide My Match.com Profile but Still Quality for Guarantee?
How Do i Contact Non-Paying Members on Match.com?
What Does a Green Highlighted Profile on Match.com Mean?
How Can I Tell Who the Paying Members Are?
How Much will the Match.com Six Month Guarantee Cost in Total?
Does Match.com Have Any Other Deals?
How Do I Change My Primary Photo on Match.com?
What Does It Mean If She Looked at My Profile but Didn’t Wink?
What If I Get No Replies to my Emails?
What is the Number of Members at Match.com?
Do Match.com Free Weekends Exist?
How Do I Hide My Profile on Match.com?
As someone who signs up for services to review or test them, I’m very familiar with this process! To hide your profile:
1. Click on Profile at the top of the screen
2. On the left, you should see a section labeled Visibility Options. Simply click Hide Profile.
What Happens When I Hide My Profile?
There several things hiding your profile do but primarily it removes you from search results. You can still contact people when your profile is hidden but they won’t be able to look at your profile so that sort of defeats the purpose (so remember to make yourself visible if you start contacting people). Additionally, you will not be shown in people’s “Who’s Viewed Me” section. However, if you unhide your profile you will appear in this section for anyone you viewed. Keep this in mind if for some reason you’re hiding your profile in an attempt to not let people know you were looking at them!
Can I Hide My Match.com Profile But Still Quality for Guarantee?
As I covered in my discussion of issues with the six month guarantee, you cannot hide your profile and still qualify for the guarantee. Be sure to read all the rules as there are additional qualifications.
How Do i Contact Non-Paying Members on Match.com?
If you are a paying subscriber to Match.com, you can contact anyone you want regardless of whether they pay or not. However, if you contact a non-payer then they will not be able to contact you back. Unfortunately, Match.com doesn’t reveal who is a paying member and who is not. The only people you can be sure pay are those with a green background around their profile.
What Does a Green Highlighted Profile on Match.com Mean?
A profile highlighted in green is someone who has signed up for the platinum package. Anyone who is attempting to qualify for the 6-month guarantee has to sign up for this plan. This package also allows the member to see when people open emails that they send and their profiles are shown to new members first. Obviously it’s also highlighted in green.
As a side note, I had always thought that the Match.com 6-month guarantee came free with the standard 6-month plan but it is actually a separate plan (that costs a dollar more per month than the standard 6-month plan). I suspect this had been changed at some point but it’s only a dollar more per month so I guess it isn’t a huge problem.
How Can I Tell Who the Paying Members Are?
One question had asked if a green profile meant the user was a subscriber. As I described, green is actually the platinum account. To be clear though, I don’t believe there is a way to differentiate normal users from paying users normally.
How Much will the Match.com Six Month Guarantee Cost in Total?
The plan to get the 6-month guarantee is $17.99 a month or a total of $107.94.
Does Match.com Have Any Other Deals?
Match.com has a 7-day free trial. If you use this trial you can still sign up for the 6-month guarantee if you want to try to take advantage of both promotions.
Match also has a promotion where you can get 20% off the priceof any of their standard plans. I believe that this would work with the 6-month guarantee but it’s not clear to me if it would work with the 7-day trial. If you decide to try this be sure to follow the instructions on the sign up screen in the link above.
How Do I Change My Primary Photo on Match.com?
Changing your primary photo is pretty simple although you will have to wait up to 24 hours for them to approve your new photo as your primary. To change your photo:
1. Click Profile at the top of the screen
2. Click on Add/Edit Photos on the next screen (it should be just below the “My Profile” heading)
3. Any photo that can be set as your primary photo should have a “make primary” button. If you have other photos that can be made your primary photo just click the button and the process to change it should begin.
4. If none of your other photos are marked as “make primary” your current photos are not seen as good candidates for your primary photo. This would normally be because they want your primary photo to be a clear headshot of only you.
What Does It Mean If She Looked at My Profile but Didn’t Wink?
To be honest, it doesn’t mean much of anything at all. Most people look at a large number of profile but contact very few (or sometimes none at all). Don’t take it personally and if you think she’s interesting why not contact her?
What If I Get No Replies to my Emails?
In my online dating guide I discuss this in great detail in my section on an absence of responses. There are more reasons than you might think for this sort of thing to happen so it’s best to not take this personally. For all you know the people you are contacting aren’t even paying members.
What is the Number of Members at Match.com?
I’ve not seen any numbers on the exact count of members but I do know that as of June 2009, Match.com was getting close to 3.5 million visitors a month.
Do Match.com Free Weekends Exist?
To date, I’ve never seen a Match.com free weekend. To be honest, the service doesn’t have very many free time promotions that I’m aware of, although they do offer several discount promotions such as getting 20% off when subscribing.
Brad is a happily married man that found great success (and his wife!) using online dating. He now shares his thoughts and experiences, on this site and in his free online dating guide, to assist others in finding success. 
Hi I found this very useful, thank you. Just one additional question though – if I hide my profile and then look at someone else’s profile, but then consequently un-hide my profile, will I then show up in their Who’s Viewed Me section? Thanks in advance.
That’s a good question…although I’m not sure of the answer! If you want, you can email me (from my contact form) and I’ll give you the user id of a test account I keep at Match. You can then hide, view my profile, unhide and I’ll let you know if I see anything
Elle, actually I did have the answer to this (it’s in the What Happens When I Hide My Profile question). If you hide it and view a bunch of profiles, whenever you unhide those views WILL show up for the people you were viewing.
If you want to avoid people knowing that you viewed their profile forever for some reason, the only solution might be to have a second account that you always keep hidden and use to view profiles (although I can’t really think of too many reasons to go this length!)
I have changed my match.com profile to private, or hidden, over 6 months ago, as I am no longer actively looking and I am no longer a paying subscriber. I don’t want to totally delete it, so if I ever needed it again, I don’t have to start from scratch.
My question is, sometimes I get emails from match.com saying someone has winked at me or favorited me, when I check my profile – it’s public! I am NOT and have not changed it back to public status, does match do this on their own from time to time?
Thanks!
Hey Annie…my wife actually had the same problem after we had been dating. She started getting contacts again and didn’t understand why and then saw her profile was re-enabled.
The only thing we could think was that she had logged back in at one point and perhaps that had re-enabled her account automatically. Obviously that shouldn’t happen but that was our best guess. I will say that after she set it to hidden the second time we didn’t have any problems going forward.
Great post, Brad, thank you very much. Here’s my question to you or anybody who knows the answer:
Can I change the feature on Match that shows other users that I’m “online now” ? That makes me nervous. It makes me feel as if I should respond to winks, emails, etc., at this second, because other users know I’m “there.” I much prefer to think about winks and emails later when I’m offline.
Hey Walt – I looked into it and you can’t turn that feature off. Match.com states that this feature brings value to their users so they don’t allow you to turn it off.
I do understand where you’re coming from but I guess I understand where they’re coming from too. One big complaint I hear from people is the claim that all of the profiles on such-and-such a dating site are “dead” and the person that created it doesn’t even use the service. With the online now feature, it does reveal that a service has a lot of active members.
I’m curious about the “online now” feature on match.com. I have been seeing someone for a few months and he seems to always be online even though he will be texting me and telling me he’s on his way to work, etc. We are in the process of perhaps moving to a more exclusive relationship and I don’t want to jump the gun and assume the worst especially since he will show up online at weird hours of the day and night. Could he actually NOT be on match but show online?
Denise – I do think Match sometimes can show people online when they’re not. I think this could have to do with how the web browsers work or just a glitch in their system.
I say this because a few months ago a guy contacted me and he was angry with Match.com and was telling me they are a bunch of liars. He was saying this because when he logged in at 5AM before work there were something like 5 pages or people showing online (according to him). My thought is that Match.com wasn’t trying to trick him, their system is just imperfect.
So I wouldn’t read too much into him showing as online. If you start dating exclusively and he doesn’t take his profile down, I would find that more concerning.
How do I add more pictures to my profile?
To upload more photos to your Match.com profile you should be able to:
1. When logged in, click on the Profile link and then click on Photos
2. You should then be able to browse and upload photos
Also, if you have trouble with that Match.com will post photos to your profile for you if you email them the photos (although I’ve never tried this personally). To do this:
1. Email the photos to this address: photos@Match.com
2. In your email include this information: Your full name, your Match.com user name, the email address you used to sign up and your date of birth.
Either of those should work although the first is the preferred way.
I have gone to Match’s website and not logged on. I searched my Match name and it shows me online now. I have cleared all information in browser before going to the match site and even renewed my ip address, yet still saw that I was on line now. I think if you read email from match.com it signals “online now” and latches it on for at least one hour… maybe more. They may be writing to a file on your hard drive, and reading that when you enter their site. I haven’t figured it out exactly yet, but will.
If I’ve favorited a person, and now I can’t view their profile, what does that mean? Does that mean that they’ve taken their profile down? Can they still read e-mails? Or does that mean they’ve blocked me?
Kent – I can’t be 100% sure but my best guess would be that they hid their profile (or possibly deleted their account).
What seems most plausable to me is that they met someone but forgot to take their profile down. When they saw someone new expressing interest in them it would prompt them to remove their profile.
That’s my best guess. Of course, I guess they could block you but that seems like a pretty extreme step to take just because you added them as a favorite…and it wouldn’t be my first guess as to what’s going on.
How do you clear out names you don’t want to see anymore from all the different categories ? ( favorites, winks, I viewed, they viewed , etc?)
Hi Brad,
What does “online now” mean in match.com. what is the difference between IM. I cant seem to contact those who are online but not on IM.
Thanks!
Hey Charlie – I’m not sure you can actually do that. I would suspect that favorites would just be a flag on the profile that you would remove but clearing out who you viewed or who viewed you sounds like something that would stick around.
I can look into it but if any other readers know the answer to this that would be a big help!
AWS23 – online now should mean what you would expect it to (that they are visiting the website and you should be able to contact them). However, I’ve had several readers complain to me that the “online now” feature isn’t perfect and will often show people as online after they have left. I suspect that is what you are seeing (unless there’s an option to turn off IM which I’m not aware of)
Hi Brad,
Is my (unhidden) profile searchable for non-members? I sort of remember that I initially posted an incomplete profile, did not pay for a while, but still received daily matches, even before I finalized the profile and paid my dues. I do not have a problem with match.com members viewing my profile, but I would mind if outsiders can perform a random search for all males of a certain age in a specific area to see if people they know are on match.com. Thanks for your take on that.
Stefan – I believe someone would need to create a profile first…however they wouldn’t have to be a paying member. A few years ago when you went to Match.com you could search right away before you had a profile (if I’m remembering correctly, at least). So I think at one time what you describe would have been a concern but today I don’t think it be.
I just went to Match and tried to do a search as a non-member (well, no logged in at least) and it looked like it was going to let me search but at the first page of search results it forced me to create an account.
Hi Stefan, thanks for being here for us newbies. My question is, “how can you take someone off your favorites list?”
CJ – when you are looking at your favorites (Connections then My Favorites) there should be an X in the upper right corner of each favorite’s box. If you click that X is will delete them as a favorite.
Hi Brad,
Lets assume I am not logged into Match.com and do not have it set to auto-login. Does clicking on a profile from the Match.com’s “See today’s matches” email cause my profile to show I am ‘Online Now’?
Thanks
Jason – I wouldn’t think so…unless to view profiles they actually have to log you in. The next time you do this, see if there’s any option when viewing the profile for you to Log Off. If there is, I would say you’re showing as online. If there isn’t, I’d say you wouldn’t be showing online.
Ok I have a match.com question and was directed here by well umm google. LOL! I have been seeing a guy for a few months. We took it slow but for weeks have both talked about (And agreed) to be exclusive. He tells me all the time that I’m the only girl he even wants to talk to. He was upfront about having a match.com (and another site) account when we first met but said that he had cancelled his membership and had no interest in it. Imagine my surprise when my roommate is on her 7 day trial match.com profile (she is trying to see if its better than EH) and I see him on the screen! She said she had emailed him not knowing I was dating him and he had not responded HOWEVER she had also winked at him and he viewed her profile so he was obviously on there at some point. I didnt want to get him all defensive so I just asked him if he was still on the site and he said no but he was getting match emails and winks and even message notifications so he doesnt think he is hidden but he doesnt pay anymore so cant do anything at all on the site and that he will eventually get around to trying to figure out how to get rid of it completely. I asked my roommate if it would show him looking or being online if he reads the emails and she said no not the free ones. She went on there to see if he went home and deleted and it actually said online now with the option of IM’ing him (which her free trial expired and she hasnt decided so she of course coudlnt if she wanted to but the option was lit up for members). She was like oh well you only can IM members so he HAS to be lying. She also admitted that pretty much every day his profile says active within 24 hours and only once since she saw him on there has it said active within 3 days.
SOOOOOOOOOOO of course now I’m confused and want to make sure I’m not overreacting before I confront him. Him and I talk constantly and hang out a lot so I doubt he has a lot of time to be actually meeting up with anyone but at the same time it seems weird. I mean how much is there to do for a non subscriber to log on at least once a day?? And do non members still have the IM option on their profile??
Thanks!
Hi Brad,
Just to alert you and everyone else reading your blog that Match.com has some serious privacy issues. I realized today that my account had been hacked, my photos been taken down and my profile been changed. I was suddenly transformed into a middle aged female looking for guys! Customer service immediately blocked my account and granted me a full refund. However, they said this happens from time to time when the associated e-mail account has a weak password – the hacker accesses the profile via the e-mail account, changes the Match.com password and gets a free ride under someone else’s subscription. I had not disclosed the compromised e-mail account (it’s AOL) to anyone except AOL, Yahoo!, and Match.com employees, which leads me to believe this was an inside job. Just thought I post this as a cautionary tale – needless to say my enthusiasm for online dating is somewhat diminished.
Concerned – quite a few women run into the issue you’re running into. Check out this article for my thoughts on these situations:
http://www.littleredrails.com/blog/2011/04/14/his-dating-profile-is-still-active-is-he-interested-or-not/
Stefan – I seriously doubt this is an inside job from Match.com. I’d be more concerned that you have a virus or keylogger or trojan on your personal computer (so be sure to run a virus/malware scanner if you haven’t). Even if you don’t, you’ll likely want to change your passwords for important accounts because someone figured out your password one way or another (and if you have other accounts that use the same password you could be at risk).
Often when someone’s dating account it compromised, it’s NOT so that the person stealing your account could get a free ride. It just wouldn’t work: just as in your case the legitimate owner of the account will recognize too quickly. Instead, I suspect this is someone trying to use your account so they can pursue the Romance Scam by convincing OTHER Match.com members to trust them and give them their personal emails before you notice the account compromise. Once they’ve convinced someone to take the conversation off of Match.com, it doesn’t matter that you noticed the compromise: they’re talking in personal email and can pursue the scam regardless.
You can see more on my thoughts on the Romance Scam here:
http://www.littleredrails.com/blog/2009/10/16/online-dating-scams-the-romance-scam/
This type of activity is also seen when people have their credit card compromised and find that they’ve been signed up for an online dating service. It’s a different approach but with the same goal of finding a target for a scam without actually purchasing a Match.com account. This activity is often suspected by many as being an “inside job” by Match, too, but it’s simply not the case. You can read more on my thoughts on this here:
http://www.littleredrails.com/blog/2011/02/18/help-ive-been-incorrectly-charged-for-a-dating-subscription/
I actually had my credit card numbers used several years ago by someone doing exactly this!
HI, my IM on match.com shows a red x, when I opened it previously it seemed to work fine but had my profile as a second conversation even though I was attempting to contact one person it seemed as though I was talking to myself also. Now whenever I attempt instant messaging the window says: To open Messenger, go to the tab or window with one of these speech bubbles : no new messages, new messages…… confused please help!
Tom – I’m not familiar with this at all. I’ve never used the Messenger on Match.com. Could it be that you have to have a message from someone before you can chat with them? I didn’t think that was the case but it’s the best guess I can come up with.
Has anyone else run into this that could give Tom some help?
Hey, Brad,
I was really interested in what RICK had to say on July 29th. The same thing is happening to me. I haven’t logged in for quite some time but did open an email. When I searched my name, it showed that I had been online (even though I haven’t actually logged in in over two months). I also had browsed some profiles without being logged in, do I then show up in that person’s Who’s Viewed Me???? Just wondering how they can achieve this?????
Hey Nicole – since you’re both seeing it I’m guess that it WILL show you as active when you do this. My guess as to how they do this is probably by keeping a cookie for your web browser that will automatically log you in when you view a profile via email.
My guess is that they are actually logging you in before showing you the profile (even though they don’t make it clear that you’ve been logged in).
Is there a way to have private pics that I only make available to individuals Im interested in? You can do this on POF and match affinity.
I’m not open to displaying to the world Im single – I know some people will say it defeats the object but I just want to be able to say hello to people im interested in and make my pics available to them only.
thanks
Hey Brad,
I’ve had this girl favorite my profile but she doesn’t appear on my ‘whose viewed me’ section. Is this possible?
altdel – if that feature exists in Match I’ve not used it or heard of it. Not a bad idea…anyone ever used something like this on Match?
Az – my best guess is that she had her profile hidden and was browsing profiles picking favorites then unhid her profile. That’s a guess….generally I’d agree with you and suspect it wasn’t possible.
Brad,
For example: ‘Profile Insights’, ‘Who viewed me (4) reset’. On the ‘Who’s Viewed Me’ page, is the ‘(4)’ the first four people from the top of the page. Or, are they listed in no particulate order?
Hey Pat – if I had to guess I would think the (4) would represent the new people who had viewed you…so yeah, probably the first four.
I have a match.com question. I’ve been dating this guy I met off match exclusively for 2 months. He took down his profile and I did as well. I favorited him and while it still shows his profile is hidden or deleted, every so often it will say active within 24 hours or 3 days or 5 days. What’s the meaning of this? I don’t want to automatically assume the worst and I don’t want to cause a war over this. What are your thoughts?
Hi, I am having problsm uploading pictures. I use the UK match.com website. When click on the photos section, nothing really happens, it might take me into phoo manager, but it doesn’t have any option to upload anything (i’m guessing it should!). It tells me how many photos I have in my albums (0) but doesn’t give me any option to actually add any! Is this just happening on my computer?
Jen – if his profile remains hidden I wouldn’t stress too much about it. I know I’ve talked to several people who have complained that Match.com shows people being active when they feel that they weren’t. I think this is even sometimes caused by the emails that Match sends and if you look at any of the Matches they send you it will show you as having been logged in.
The real tricky thing here if you did want to bring it up is it appears he’s not doing anything more than you are: occasionally logging in. If you challenged him on it, it seems to me he could challenge you right back.
Dianne – since this is a core feature that I’m sure Match would want working all the time, I suspect it could be something specific to your situation. You could try a different computer but you could also download a different web browser like Firefox or Chrome and then try it there. If you still have the issue in a different browser or on a different computer then I’m thinking there’s a bigger issue here.
I know you can block certain individuals from contacting you on Match but when you block them does it also block your profile showing up in their search and having them look at your profile?
Hey Curious – I believe when you block someone you’ll be presented with a couple of options: block from search and block from contact. You can pick both and then they shouldn’t be able to contact you or see your profile.
I’m curious as to the full answer of a previous question. I have a favorite, who’s profile is now unavailable, meaning either they have hidden their profile or are no longer a member of the website. If they are indeed no longer a member of the website and I were to send an email, would they be able to read it or would they have to re-subscribe?
Thanks
Brad,
Would I be able to tell if someone is searching for me, finds my profile using the search tool but does not view my profile?
JJ
anon – I’m fairly certain that to read an emails you would have to subscribe. Even if you were subscribed and then someone sent you and email, to read and reply would require membership.
JJ – if someone searching you but doesn’t look at your profile, this isn’t going to show you anything as far as I know. They actually have to view your profile for you to be aware of anything.
Brad,
I’ve been dating someone for 4 months. He deactivated his account 2 months ago, yet his profile/picture still appear on match. When I confronted him about this one month ago he showed me his account. He clicked on an email from match which was the profile of an interested member. Her profile was visible but it was limited and he could only view it further if he re-subscribed. However, when he was showing me his inactive account, I had my computer on and his status said “online now”. He shows me the match emails he is still receiving. Sometimes he deletes them but if he opens one, his status changes. His picture and profile are still appearing online, and his status often changes from “in over 3 weeks” to “online now” to “24 hours”. Can an unsubscribed member’s profile and picture remain on the site and appear to be an active member? How long after a member cancels a subscription will it take before the profile/picture are no longer visible on match. Or does a member have to complete more steps beyond cancelling a subscription to be certain their profile/picture do not appear on the site anymore?
Louise – an unsubscribed member will still show unless they hide their profile or delete their account. I don’t believe there’s a time limit, his account would continue to show until he hides/deletes it. Hiding the profile is very easy though. If I remember correctly, you just go to the account settings and change the visibility status.