London, U.K., February 12, 2007 – comScore Networks, a leader in measuring the digital age, today reported the top online personals sites in the U.K., France and the U.S.  The French showed the highest proportion of Internet users age 15 and older visiting online personals sites in December 2006 (22 percent), followed by the British with 20 percent and the Americans with 13 percent.

“The offline methods people use to connect with others for dating vary by country, and Internet dating follows that same pattern,” said Bob Ivins, managing director for comScore Europe.  “We note that local nuances are critical to success, as demonstrated by the fact that each country has a fairly distinct list of top sites in the category.  Interestingly, usage of dating sites seems to peak in the summer months in each country -- July in the U.K. and U.S. and September in France.”

In the U.K., the most popular site is DatingDirect.com with 1.4 million U.K. visitors in December ‘06.  DatingDirect.com was recently acquired by France’s most popular personals site MeetIC, which had 2.3 million French visitors in December.  In the U.S., Yahoo! Personals leads the category with 4.5 million U.S. visitors, age 15 or older.  However, Match.com owned sites captured nearly 4 million visitors – not including its significant powering relationships with AOL (1.0 million visitors) and MSN (635,000 visitors).  In fact, the only site included in the ranking of the top online personals sites in at least two countries is Match.com.

* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes and access from mobile phones or PDAs.

** Excludes traffic from sites powered by Match.com 

* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes and access from mobile phones or PDAs.

** Excludes traffic from co-branded sites

^ Powered by Match.com

* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes and access from mobile phones or PDAs.

** Excludes traffic from sites powered by Match.com, such as Love@AOL (1.0 million unique visitors) and MSN Personals (635,000 unique visitors).

About comScore World Metrix

comScore World Metrix is the first service to continuously measure and report online behaviour on a world-wide basis, providing visitation metrics and demographic characteristics for Web site audiences around the world.  With active representation of countries that comprise the vast majority of the global Internet population, World Metrix provides its clients with worldwide Internet population estimates and harmonized online performance metrics based on a consistent methodology across all countries.  More than 100 clients subscribe to comScore’s World Metrix service, including 8 of the top 10 interactive advertising agencies.

About comScore Networks
comScore Networks is a global leader in measuring the digital age. This capability is based on a massive, global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behaviour, including online and offline purchasing. comScore panellists also participate in survey research that captures and integrates their attitudes and intentions. Through its proprietary technology, comScore measures what matters across a broad spectrum of behaviour and attitudes.  comScore consultants apply this deep knowledge of customers and competitors to help clients design powerful marketing strategies and tactics that deliver superior ROI.  comScore services are used by global leaders such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Verizon, Best Buy, The Newspaper Association of America, Tribune Interactive, ESPN, Fox Sports, Nestlé, MBNA, Universal McCann, the United States Postal Service, Merck and Expedia.  For more information, please visit www.comscore.com.