Internet Dating: Profile Views vs. Actual Interest

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Once again I am using Google searches that send people to my site for article ideas. This time the search that sent someone my way was: “If a guy views your online profile often are they interested?”

The Short Answer
Wink at him and find out. It may not be called “winking” in the service you use but there will be some kind of method for contacting him without actually having to write an email.

The Long Answer
This is an interesting question because the way that a woman browses profiles can often differ from how a man would do the same. For example, at times a woman will have so many contacts that she barely has time to view the profiles of the men who have emailed her. In these cases, the woman would be less inclined to simply browse dating profiles (she already has more to deal with than she wants). As for men, when I was dating online I knew that any woman I contacted probably had several other men contacting her at the same time. This knowledge caused me to want to contact anyone I thought I might be interested in as quickly as possible. This in-turn had the affect of causing me to want to view as many profiles as I had time to so I could find as many potential dates as possible. It is not always the case but I believe the following is generally true: men are driven to view as many profiles as possible while women receive enough communication that viewing profiles may not be necessary.

So why discuss the differences? Well, that brings us back the question: “If a guy views your online profile often are they interested?” As described above, men view so many profiles that the only solid answer I can give this question is “maybe”. The fact that the question implies that the profile is being viewed repeatedly by the same man improves her odds, without a doubt. So why would a man not contact a woman if he is acting in a way that would suggest he is interested? Every case is different but I can give the most common reasons I did not contact a woman even though I repeatedly viewed her profile:

On the Fence
There were times, especially early on in my online dating experience, where I just couldn’t make up my mind on whether or not to contact a woman. In the beginning, this was caused mostly because I was shy and wary of online dating. Later on, profiles that sounded “too good to be true” often caused me to pause since a few bad dates showed that “too good to be true” is normally “far worse than expected”.

Thought I Would be Wasting my Time (or hers)
There were times where I would read a profile and really think the woman sounded interesting. At the same time, she might describe some traits she really disliked that I knew I had. In these cases, I knew I really liked a profile of a woman who would likely not like mine. Even with this knowledge I would often revisit the profile. To this day I’m not sure why. I suppose it was similar to window shopping for something you know you will never buy (and I know I’m not the only one who does that).

Too Busy
Near the end of my online dating experience, I was having enough success that my schedule was rather full with dates. At this point, I would often revisit profiles because I wanted to figure out who I wanted to contact next.

My advice to a woman who in interested in someone who is looking at her profile but not contacting her would be to give some encouragement. The “wink” would work. Just viewing his profile several times might work as well. In each of the cases for not contacting I described above, if the woman would have encouraged me in any way I would have contacted her. She was already on my “maybe” list – any encouragement would have moved her right to the “future date” list. Obviously a woman should feel free to write the guy if she is comfortable doing so. I’ve just not heard many success stories of women emailing men.To any guys out there who find themselves asking the same question posed here: contact the woman! Because of the differences in how we view profiles, if a woman is repeatedly viewing your profile she might be trying to send you a message. Even if she’s not trying to send you some type of signal, what’s one more email?Finally, for more on the topic of emails and winks the following articles from the guide might interest you:
Online Dating Guide: Winks and Views
Online Dating Guide: First Contact

 

Related posts:

  1. My Dating Profile Gets Lots of Views But I Get No Emails
  2. Improve Profile Views with your Heading
  3. Dealing with Email Responses That Show Little Interest
  4. Why Do Men Ignore What I Require in My Dating Profile?
  5. Renewed Interest in a Guy after You’ve Rejected Him

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About the Author:

Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.

Comments

  1. just hope  April 2, 2012

    Hi
    thank you for this article, I am girl, I have 2 bad experinces, and I am looking for a good one, in the both experinces , man contacted me and he thru his emails was happy to meet me, but then everything changed and both of them, said the same thing, YOU are very pure and I am bad man, it is better for you to find someone else, I spent with the first man, one year and half, and then I met another man, I spent only 2 weeks with him, we are from different countries, and I have no idea, why did they do that?

    is it a mistake for a woman to be pure?

  2. Brad  April 7, 2012

    Hi just hope – I don’t think being pure is bad but I’m not sure I fully understand your situation. It would probably be better for you to email me through my contact page.

  3. Richard  April 12, 2013

    Lately, I have been receiving many winks on match.com but when I click on the lady’s profile, it no longer exists. This has been going on for several weeks now. What exactly is going on? Is the lady cancelling her service? Is she being dropped by match.com? Is it a scam of some sort? I really would like to know. Thanks.

    • Brad  April 20, 2013

      Hey Richard – over the years I’ve had others complain to me of this same issue. I don’t really know how it could be a scam (what is the winker gaining?) but I agree it is quite odd. I’ve had both men and women complain that this happens. I’m really at a loss to suggest why it would occur, although I don’t think the majority of people see this and based on that I’d expect it to go away after a time. I guess there’s a chance that some people sign up, start winking and then feel self-conscious and remove their account…but that’s just a guess.

  4. Brian  February 7, 2016

    Brad
    on the subject of not emailing following a profile view (for the ladies here). Men can be instinctive too.
    There have been a few occasions when I had the instinct from a woman’s photos that she was not only attractive, but kind etc but the ad text was too sparse. I feel that writing an email based on a conclusion drawn that way is unlikely to come across well (after all they don’t know I am highly perceptive).
    The other situation might be that she describes herself in a way that’s too general and too short since I don’t want to write the same email every man did. There needs to be something different, quirky, or unique in the profile text that both sparks my interests and gives me a hook for an interesting email.
    I might favourite her, cruise back and see if she had improved her profile and given me something to say. If the ladies are seeing somebody interesting show up, take a look at their profile, see what you have in common, then look at yours and see if you are showing that common ground. Are you hiding behind the roses in your profile or shouting ‘I am what I am’ and blossoming?

  5. Mark  February 9, 2016

    Winks from people whose profile have been removed are scammers. They will send heaps of winks and then get you to correspond by email – plenty of information out there about this. Plus sadly their photos are randomly taken from the internet.

  6. Mark  February 9, 2016

    In relation to lots of views. Agree with the comments above, I could keep looking at a profile to consider contacting or refreshing myself what that profile was. But some sites have a system that has a box of who is online now and available to contact. If you scroll through that box it simply provides their user name and photo – except at the other end it tells that person you just viewed them, in reality you didn’t.

    Then they look at a box of whose viewed them, your profile pic and name comes up and they scroll through without actually opening up any profiles…. guess what, they come up as having viewed you, but they didn’t really…. now you enter a revolving door/cycle of so called views. I hate it, I think you have to open up the profile to actually be labelled as a view.

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