Can You Search for Profiles on OkCupid?

Not the way you would search a name on Google. OkCupid has no search for a particular member, and members can only be seen by other people who are logged in. What you can do is set the traits you want in the Looking For section, which shapes everyone you are shown, and search other members' answers to match questions from a computer.

Nobody can type a member's name into OkCupid and pull up that person. The app is built around showing you people, not around letting you look people up.

Members are also visible only to people who are logged in. They do not appear in Google results, so a woman's page cannot be found by searching her name outside the app.

If you are hoping to find a woman you already know, the app is the wrong tool. If you want to meet someone new, the tools it does have are better than they sound.

OkCupid has no separate Match Search area. Your search preferences live in the Looking For section of your page, and they apply everywhere you see people.

You can set preferences for background. That means things like languages, religion and politics. It also covers education, work, ethnicity and sign. You can set lifestyle ones, such as alcohol, smoking, marijuana and diet. You can set family ones, such as kids and pets. And you can set looks, meaning body type and height.

Every one of those is optional. Fill in the few that genuinely matter to you and leave the rest alone.

OkCupid shows people who meet all of your preferences first. When nobody fits perfectly, it shows people slightly outside them.

Age and distance work the same way, so a woman a little outside your range can still appear. That is why you sometimes see someone you did not expect.

It also means a long list of preferences does not shrink the pool to zero. It sorts the pool. Men who set a dozen strict settings often assume the app is empty, when really it is simply ordering people by how closely they match.

On a computer, Discover has a search bar for match questions. You can search other members' answers by question or by keyword, and OkCupid says this is free for every user.

This is an unusual tool. You can type a word such as hiking, or a topic that matters to you, and see how members answered questions about it. It is a way to find women who share something specific with you, rather than scrolling through everyone.

Use it to start conversations, too. An answer she gave is something real to ask about, which is far better than a bare "hi".

Finding someone is only half the job. The reason to search is to write a first line that could only be sent to her.

Say you find a woman who answered a question about travel with a story about getting lost in a small town. Write to her about that town. Ask what she was looking for or what went wrong. You have given her something personal to answer, and she can see you read what she wrote.

Keep it short, about two sentences. Ask one question she can answer in a line. Leave her looks out of it, because every other man mentioned them.

Do not set your preferences so tightly that you rule out women who would suit you. Body type and height settings in particular cut out many people who might have been a good match in person.

Do not treat the answers as a script. A woman's answers tell you what she cares about, not what she wants from you. Keep your tone light, and let the conversation go where it goes.

And do not spend your evenings searching and never writing. Searching feels like progress and is easy to do endlessly. Set a limit, such as twenty minutes, find a handful of women worth writing to, and write to them.

OkCupid rewards men who answer questions honestly and write real answers, because the app is built around that content. The more you give it, the better the search works for you.

Say you have set your preferences and answered plenty of questions. Say you have written to women about specific things. If you are still not getting dates, the problem is usually the photos or the first lines. That is the part worth fixing next.