Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

BharatMatrimony Files Complaint Against Google

INDIA TIMES - Feb 3 - Matchmaking portal BharatMatrimony.com has filed a complaint against Google in the Competition Commission of India, citing discriminatory trade practices related to its AdWords program. The AdWords program is Google's main source of revenue, whereby it sells keywords to advertisers and displays them in the form of ads online. Google earned about 96% of its total revenues of $38 billion from ads, last year. As per sources, BharatMatrimony has filed the complaint on the issue of keywords relating to its websites being sold to rival parties such as Shaadi.com, and Jeevansaathi.com.

The full article was originally published at India Times, but is no longer available.

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Indians Get Particular About Online Marriage

AFP - Feb 13 - Marriage -- or "shaadi" in Hindi -- remains a cornerstone of society in conservative India, with hundreds of matchmaking sites concentrating on finding their members suitable life partners rather than casual dates. Long-established portals like shaadi.com, bharatmatrimony.com and jeevansathi.com offer general searches. Yazdi Tantra, a computer consultant in Mumbai, runs theparsimatch.com, one of a number of websites for the dwindling community of followers of the ancient Zoroastrian faith. Sanjeev Pahwa, head of the New Delhi-based firm Strikeone Advertising, said targeting niche groups made business sense as he realised smaller start-ups like his couldn't compete with the major players. The result was bposhaadi.com, for call centre workers and govtshaadi.com, targeting state sector employees looking for love.

The full article was originally published at AFP, but is no longer available.

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E-Matrimony Projected To Scale New Heights In India

DIGITAL JOURNAL -- May 15 -- According to the projections of EmPower Research, the online matrimony market in India is poised to grow in the next few years, with a revenue-generation of $63m and a user-registration of 21m by 2011. Shaadi.com, India’s leading matrimony site currently has 11m subscribers and 200m page views per month. Jeevansathi.com claims that with nearly 2.5m registrants and 14 brick-and-mortar centers, it is the nation’s third-ranked matrimony Web site. FULL ARTICLE @ DIGITAL JOURNAL

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