San Francisco, Mar 04: Match.com, the US Internet dating company, took the no. 1 spot in the first global ranking of online personal providers done by comScore Media Metrix, said a spokesman for the online market research firm on Wednesday. Match.com, owned by media mogul Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp, had 29.6 million unique visitors to its Web properties in January, when a total of 140.5 million people visited online dating sites.
Match.com had nearly three times as many visitors as closest rival MatchNet Plc, which had 10.6 million unique visitors to its properties including JDate.com, AmericanSingles.com and CollegeLuv.com.
Europe's MeetIC.com took third place with 10.2 million visitors in January.
Rounding out the top five were Yahoo Personals, with 9.4 million visitors, and Lavalife.com, with 8.2 million visitors.
"I wouldn't say there were any major surprises, Match.com has been a dominant player in the United States," said comScore spokesman Graham Mudd.
Match.com recently said that its personals business, which also includes udate.com, has 974,000 paying subscribers.
It operates more than 30 Match.com sites in 18 different languages and has partnerships with such Internet portals as Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and AOL from Time Warner Inc.
US consumers spent $109.7 million on online personals in the second quarter of 2003, according to the latest data from comScore Networks and the Online Publishers Association.