How Are Top Picks Chosen on Match.com?

Match.com chooses your picks from two sources: the preferences you set and what you do on the dating site. Recommended members are people in your area, chosen from your preferences and your activity. That activity includes who you send Likes or messages to. Top Picks go a step further. They match your preferences for faith, ethnicity and marital status. They cover smoking, drinking and marijuana use, plus body type, education and kids. At the same time, they slightly widen your age, height and distance filters.

The two lists start from the same place and then split.

Recommended members are local women picked from what you said you want and from how you use Match. Top Picks hold women to a longer checklist of your preferences, from faith and education to whether she smokes or wants kids. In return, Top Picks relax three filters a little: age, height and distance.

So Top Picks are both stricter and looser than your normal search. They are stricter on the details you care about and looser on the numbers.

Recommended picks lean on what you actually do, such as who you send Likes and messages to.

That means your own habits feed it. Send Likes to women who genuinely fit what you want, and you are telling Match the right thing. Like everyone who scrolls past out of boredom, and you are telling it nothing useful.

Be deliberate with Likes. Each one is also a vote on the kind of woman you want to see.

The small widening on age, height and distance is useful, not an error.

Most men set those three numbers tighter than they need to. Think of an age range cut off at an exact birthday, a distance that stops one neighborhood short, or a height floor picked on a whim. Each one quietly removes women who might have been a great date.

The same thing works against you from her side. Picture a woman who sets her upper age limit a year below yours. She never sees you, however much she might have liked you.

Top Picks nudge past those edges for you. When a pick sits just outside your normal range, give her a real look before you skip her.

Better input makes better picks, and the input is yours.

Set your preferences on purpose. Go through the details Top Picks use, from faith and education to kids and drinking. Make sure each one reflects what you actually want, not what you clicked in a hurry the day you signed up.

Fill in your own details honestly and completely as well. That way the women you are shown also have a reason to want someone like you.

Then use the site the way you want the picks to look. Send Likes and messages to the women you would actually date.

Picks are a convenience, not the main way to use Match. One of the site's real strengths is search. Instead of waiting for a list to appear each day, you can go straight to the kind of woman you are after and write to her first.

Use the picks as a short daily list. Spend a few minutes on them, then go and search for the women the picks missed.

The picks also cannot know what you have never told Match. If you have a soft spot for women who play music or read a lot, go looking for them yourself.

A pick is a suggestion, not a verdict, so give each one a proper look.

Look beyond the first photo. Her written sections tell you whether an evening with her sounds fun, and they usually hand you an opener too. Check her activity too. A pick with a green dot or a green circle is using the site now. One with no dot at all may not see your message for days.

Then decide quickly. Write to her, send a Like, or move on to the next one. Picks you leave half considered pile up, and a pile of maybes is how an evening on Match turns into an hour of scrolling with nothing sent.

A pick is only a name until you write.

Read her page, find one specific thing to mention, and send a short first message with a question she can answer easily. Keep the conversation moving while she is around, and suggest meeting once you have a few good exchanges behind you.

The best pick in the world does nothing if all you do is scroll past her.