Looking for Love in the Yahoo! Personals

By Peter Weverka

"I feel pretty strange about using the personals, because I've never done it before, but here goes . . ." Many Yahoo! profiles begin this way, but why feel strange about it? You're not the only one looking for love on the Internet. Anybody can browse the profiles at Yahoo! Personals, but if you want to get in touch with someone or make yourself available, you have to submit a profile of your own. The following article explains how to do all that.

To search for love in the Yahoo! Personals, you must have a Yahoo! account and you must sign in to Yahoo!.

Searching for Mr. or Ms. Right

To search for Mr. or Ms. Right in the Yahoo! Personals, sign in to Yahoo! and go to the Personals home page. To get there, either go to Yahoo! and click the Personals link or go straight to the Personals home page at this address: http://personals.yahoo.com.

On the Personals home page, conduct your search using one of these methods:

Quick search: Fill in the fields and click the Find My Match button.

Refined search: On the Search Results page, click a link on the left side of the page to enter more search criteria and refine your search. For example, click the Love Style link and select a Love Style from the pop-up menu. Click the Update Results button to run the search again.

Keyword search: Click the Keyword Search link on the Personals home page, and in the form that appears, enter a search term and click the Find My Match button.tabmark

If a search yields any results, you see a list of profiles — descriptions and, in some cases, photos that you can read or view and ponder. Click an ad headline or the More link, and you come to the Profile Details page with detailed information about the person. From here, you can:

Save a profile: Click the Save Profile link to save a profile and be able to view it later. To see profiles you've saved, click the My Saved Profiles link on the Personals home page.

Get in touch with the person: Click the Break the Ice link and send the person a brief message. You must have created a profile of yourself to "break the ice." Unless you are a paying subscriber to Yahoo! Personals, you can only send one icebreaker message to a person (and receive one reply). You can, however, include your e-mail address in the icebreaker message in order to communicate, but by doing that, you leave the confines of Yahoo! Personals. All communications after that are done by conventional e-mail outside of Yahoo!.

Submitting a profile to Yahoo! Personals

Rather than search for love, you can try to get love to come knocking at your door by submitting your profile to Yahoo! Personals. A profile is a self-portrait by which others can find and learn something about you.

Starting on the Personals home page, click the Create a Free Profile link. You come to the Create a Profile questionnaire. Fill in the required fields plus whatever personal information you want to share. You are asked to describe yourself, describe your perfect love match, write a headline and a self-description for your ad, enter a personals name, and state whether you want people rummaging through the personal ads to be able to find you. Be sure to submit flattering photos to increase the chances of someone responding to your ad.

If someone responds to your profile

You can tell whether someone has sent to an icebreaker message because the My Personals module on the Personals home page tells you how many messages have been sent. Click the Mailbox link to go to the Mailbox page and read the message.

You can only reply once unless you are a paid subscriber, in which case you can communicate by e-mail and instant message. You can, however, include an e-mail address in your reply and communicate outside the confines of Yahoo! Personals.

To be notified by e-mail when someone has responded to your profile, click the Set Up Matches by E-mail link on the Personals home page. On the Matches by Mail page, choose your e-mail address (if you have more than one). From the drop-down menu, choose how often you want the messages sent to you.