Does Your Location Matter on Dating Apps?

Yes, a lot. Every one of the big apps builds your list around distance, so the place the app thinks you are decides which women you see and which women see you. For a man, it also decides how far you will travel for a date, and a dating coach treats that as one of the most important details of the whole process.

Tinder says proximity is a key factor in matching. It considers a potential match's distance from your current location, and it needs access to your device's location to work. The app asks you to grant it.

On Bumble, your phone's GPS decides where you are. Members are shown to each other based on their real-time location, and a distance filter is available in specific countries. Bumble says your general location cannot be customized.

Hinge has you set a location when you join, either from the device or by typing a city, neighborhood, address or zip code. You can move the pin before you save. Unlike the other two, Hinge does not update the location by itself.

Tinder's Discovery Settings let you set a maximum distance. Tinder says it may sometimes show people slightly outside that range.

So a radius is a strong preference, not a fence. If you set a tight one and still see a woman a little beyond it, that is the app working as described.

This is where men get tripped up, mostly on Hinge. Because Hinge does not update your location, a man who moves or takes a long trip is still shown as being in the old place until he changes it.

That produces a quiet kind of failure. You match with women near your old home, they want a date, and you live somewhere else. Update the location when you move, and update it when you are away long enough to want dates there.

Tinder subscribers can change their location with Passport Mode. Tinder says a subscriber who changed location this way may see people from that city for up to 24 hours. That is a feature for planning a trip, and it is not a way to pretend to live somewhere.

A woman who lives an hour away is a different prospect from one who lives ten minutes away.

a dating coach's first rule for an online date is to make the location near your place. His reason is that he wants every first date to be able to go anywhere, including home, without a long trip getting in the way. He tells a story of a date that went well in every way except that the two were too far from each other, then life got busy and a second date never happened.

Take that logic back to the app. A wide radius gives you a longer list, and a long list is not the same as a list of women you will actually meet. Distance costs you dates because every extra mile gives a good first date more chances to cool.

A small radius gives you a shorter list, and a shorter list is a better one. Every woman on it lives close enough that a date is an ordinary evening, not a trip.

A wide radius does the opposite. You see more women, and you also see more who are impossible to meet on a Tuesday. Those matches take your time, because the conversation can go on for days before somebody admits the distance is a problem.

If your area is thin, widen the radius a little rather than all the way. Move in steps, and watch whether the dates you actually go on come from the near end or the far end of the range.

• Keep your location accurate. Set it to where you really live.
• Choose a radius you would really travel for a date, not the widest one the app allows.
• Update Hinge by hand when you move or travel.
• If you are away for a stretch and want dates there, plan the trip so the location matches where you will be.

The app is a map. The women you see are the ones close enough to meet, so set it to the place you want to date.