As online dating gains in popularity and becomes the norm, the online dating market has expanded to offer niche sites to benefit specific daters (such as Sugardaddie.com for girls that want to meet a millionaire or urbansocial.com for city professionals.)

The standard online dating sites work by letting daters search profiles by a number of factors including age and location. Then you look at the photos and the information on a potential date and choose to contact him or her.

However there is a new breed of site which tries to do away with luck and the randomness of searching through endless profiles. Parship.co.uk and eHarmony offer a different approach to finding you a suitable date. These sites use scientific research and psychometric tests to match up suitable candidates.

In practice it means requires users to fill in a questionnaire / compatibility test. These results are then crunches and appropriate singles are the put forward as suitable matches. Eharmony.com claims that it is responsible for 80,000 marriages a year in the US – so the message is clear – if you are looking for a serious relationship, make sure you go to the right online dating site!