If I set my dating app to my location in Germany or Switzerland and state that I am happy to meet people within a 100km radius then I ONLY want to see profiles coming on my screen of people that are within that area (with some tolerance). We have noticed that apps that previously offered a pretty good match experience with many users in our area have lost a lot of ground during the last three years.
An example is OK Cupid. This app used to provide a lot of matches in Germany and Switzerland… and the matches were often quite good due to the cool (yet exhausting) questions and answers feature of OK Cupid where you can really get insight into the members.
But three years on, OK Cupid no longer delivers any profiles around our region. Instead, over 50% of all users are Asian accounts from the Philippines, Thailand, China, etc. There are also quite a few South American profiles coming through. We have nothing against dating across borders… and have ourselves used EuroCupid and UkraineDate to arrange international dates in the past… but when you set an area, this should be adhered to.
A lot of this problem is caused by users lying about where they are – they don’t seem to realise that this just pisses off 99% of their future matches. To combat the problem, a good app needs to somehow include some location verification methods. We add this to our feature list.