Online dating favours the ladies

By Chris Kelly
BBC News Online, Bristol

Computers have always had a certain geekiness associated with them, and until recently, so has online dating.

The fear has been meeting up with your lonely heart, who describes himself as a George Clooney look-a-like, only to find he is more of a Ken Dodd look-a-like.

Personal ad replies Rich woman: 14 Poor woman: 7 Rich male: 4 Poor male: 1

In the past this might have put people off, but recently online dating has lost the geek factor.

In a sneaky moment, we decided to find out who had the best chance of finding love online, men or women.

In a snap test we planted four fake adverts on a popular Bristol dating website; two men, two women.

One of each sex was shown to be a well-off business type, the other to be slightly poorer.

Our rich guy was posing as a "high-ranking businessman" who wants to "splash cash at top expensive restaurants".

This contrasted to our poor male, who might have to occasionally "borrow a fiver", but "really loves partying with anyone". Who doesn't?

Number three was our rich chick, she lives in classy Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol, and likes spending "outrageous amounts of money on shoes".

Our poor women, though, is a struggling comedienne, who wants to make sure the guy pays for the meal. "Clingy men and Skoda owners need not apply," apparently.

We left the ads for 10 days to see what kind of response we would get.

'Great news for women'

The two women got a total of 21 replies between them - a staggering 16 more than the guys.

Our rich female lonely heart got 14 of those, and was the most popular person by far.

If you put a picture up you're about 15 times more likely to get a response Nigel Sharman, match.com

Chat-up lines varied in quality from "Do you like watching a lot of Sex and the City" to "Fancy rockin' some more".

Of the men, our financially challenged fella would have felt lonely - he got just one reply.

But our man with the cash did not fare much better - he only got only four.

So are the scales really in favour of the women in the lonely hearts section of the internet?

Nigel Sharman from match.com, another UK dating site, says this is the case:

"It's about 60% male, and 40% female on our site. We like to say that this is great news for the women."

If you want to increase your chances of getting replies then mugshots are the answer.

"If you put a picture up you're about 15 times more likely to get a response."