Why Am I Not Seeing Many Matches on OkCupid?

Because OkCupid only shows you people who pass a short list of tests. She has to fit your age, location, gender and orientation settings. She also has to be looking for someone like you, must not have blocked you, and needs an active account. If few people clear all of that, your feed looks thin. The fix costs nothing: widen your Looking For settings and reset your passes from the Privacy section of your settings, since OkCupid does not charge to see more people.

OkCupid's rule for who appears in your feed is short. A woman shows up if she:

1. Fits the age, location, gender and orientation you set.
2. Is also looking for someone like you.
3. Has not blocked you.
4. Has an active account.

Anyone who clears all four can appear. Anyone who misses one will not, however well she might suit you.

Men with a thin feed often assume the app is punishing them. Usually the explanation is duller. The filters are doing exactly what they were told to do.

Every setting you tighten removes people. A narrow age range, a short distance and a small city stack up quickly. Three reasonable choices, made in thirty seconds at sign-up, can leave you with a feed that feels empty by Tuesday.

The second rule is the one that surprises people. She has to be looking for someone like you as well.

So her settings count as much as yours. If you are 41 and most women near you set their upper age limit at 40, you will not appear to them, and they will not appear to you. Distance works the same way. A woman who wants someone within five miles is not going to see a man who lives twelve miles away.

You cannot change her settings. You can only make sure yours are not shrinking the pool more than they need to.

This is the first of OkCupid's two fixes. Open your Looking For settings and loosen whatever you set tightest.

Start with distance. Many men set it to how far they would ideally travel, not how far they would actually go for a woman they liked. Add a few miles and see what changes. Then look at your age range. A year or two more on each side often brings in more people than you expect, and a one-year gap rarely decides whether a date goes well.

Change one setting at a time and check the feed after each change. That way you learn which setting was doing the damage.

Be honest about where you set the new lines. The right range is the one that includes every woman you would genuinely be glad to take for a drink. It is not the one that includes every woman in the county. A feed full of people you would never date feels busy, but it gets you nowhere.

The second fix lives in the Privacy section of your settings. There you can reset your passes, which brings back people you passed on before.

This matters most for men who have been on the app for a while. Pass on enough people and the feed runs dry, because the women left in your area are mostly ones you already skipped.

Before you reset, remember that you passed on each of those women for a reason once. Some deserve a second look, because tastes change and a fresh photo can change your mind. Others you will pass on again, and that is fine.

OkCupid does not charge to see more people. Its paid plans add other features, but no plan adds women to your feed. If the pool is thin, a subscription will not fix it. Your settings will.

Keep your money in your pocket until the two free fixes have done what they can. If you still want a paid plan after that, buy it for the features it actually offers, not in the hope of seeing more women.

A smaller pool is not all bad news. It forces you to take each woman seriously.

When you only see a few new faces a day, liking all of them is a waste. Like the women you would genuinely enjoy having a drink with. Men who choose carefully tend to do better than men who like everything, because a like that goes to everybody means nothing.

Write first messages that are about her, not about the weather. Pick one detail from her page and react to it with a bit of personality. Keep it short. Then aim to suggest a plan within a handful of replies instead of letting the chat drift.

Last, check the other end. If plenty of women appear but few like you back, the feed was never the real issue. Your photos and your words are. That is a different fix, and it usually starts with the lead photo and the first two lines you wrote about yourself.