Match Anywhere is a Facebook Dating feature that lets you browse suggested matches outside your primary Dating location. Adding extra Dating locations shows people in those places that you are looking there, and a separate control decides whether people who added your home area as one of their extra locations can see and match with you. Facebook says the feature is only available to some people, and not to anyone whose Dating account was only just created.

What it does

Normally Dating shows you women around your primary Dating location, the place you signed up from. Match Anywhere widens that. You add one or more extra locations, and Dating shows you suggested matches there as well.

It also works in the other direction. Adding a location tells the people there that you are looking in their area. So a woman in the city you added can see that you are interested in her city, not just passing through the app from somewhere random.

Facebook limits how many extra locations you can add, so treat each one as a real choice rather than a wish list.

Who has it

Facebook says Match Anywhere is only available to some people, and it is not available on newly created Dating accounts.

If you cannot find it, you have not done anything wrong. You simply do not have it. In that case, the tool you do have is your Dating location itself, which you can update in Dating preferences when you actually move.

The setting for people looking at your city

There is a second control that men tend to skip. It decides whether people who added your primary Dating location as one of their extra locations can see you and match with you.

Think about who those people are. Women who live elsewhere but are looking in your city, perhaps because they are moving there, visit often, or have family nearby.

For most men, leaving that open costs nothing and adds a few more women to the mix. If you only want women who already live near you, turn it off. Neither choice is wrong. Just make it on purpose.

Use it before you move

This is where Match Anywhere earns its place.

Men who move cities often describe the same habit. A week or two before they arrive, they start chatting with women in the new city. They land with conversations already going and a first date or two lined up, instead of spending the first month unpacking and feeling like a stranger.

With Match Anywhere, you can do that on Facebook Dating. Add the new city a couple of weeks out. Be honest in your conversations that you are arriving on a specific date. Then line up the first drinks for your first week there.

Use it for a trip, honestly

A trip is trickier. Women are rarely excited about a man who will be gone in three days, and plenty will not reply to someone who does not live nearby.

The women who do reply want to know one thing quickly: are you actually coming, and when? So say it early. "I'm in town for work from Tuesday to Friday. Free for a drink on Wednesday?" is a plan she can say yes or no to. A vague "maybe we can meet if I visit sometime" is not.

Message like a man with a plan

The trap with any long distance chat is the pen pal. Two people exchange long messages for weeks, get to know each other in text, and never meet. It feels like progress. It is not.

Keep the conversation light and specific, the same as you would with a woman down the street. Once she is warm, tie it to a date on the calendar. Ask for her number before you arrive so the plan does not depend on either of you opening an app at the right moment.

When to leave it alone

If you have no real plans to be in another city, Match Anywhere will mostly give you conversations that cannot go anywhere. Every hour spent charming a woman four hundred miles away is an hour not spent on women you could see this week.

Use it for moves and real trips. The rest of the time, put your effort into the women near home.