Your Search Results are on the Home page of the forum, near the top.

Since profiles are private, you must be a registered member that is signed in to see them. If you are NOT signed in, neither your profile nor Your Search Results will be visible.

Emailed about someone new? They should be in Your Search Results, with the latest new members at the beginning of that list.

Search results are based on geography, plus seven additional factors.

You get other members in your city of residence by default. Then, you can also choose up to 5 additional cities for your search results, and/or select the "everywhere" option.

In addition to geography, you can also narrow your search results by: age (9 age ranges), educational level (9 educational levels), sexual orientation (6 different types), gender presentation (9 different options), biological sex & gender (4 different options), ethnicity (8 different options), relationship type desired (6 different relationship types).

AND THEN, not only are Your Search Results narrowed by who YOU said YOU were and who YOU wanted to meet, but they narrow based on the other member's criteria as well.

So for example, using only one of the criteria above, gender presentation, let's say you said you were a femme looking to meet other femmes. You might think that would mean that ANY other member identifying as femme could potentially appear in your Search Results.

But NO, that's actually NOT the case, UNLESS those other femme members also said they wanted to meet other femmes. So if another member said she is femme but only interested in meeting other butch members, then that member would NOT be in your search results.

(There's a even more detailed description of all of the above in frequently asked questions.)

so meanwhile . . .

. . . what happened to the previous search function that searched the whole database "live," in real time?"

Short Answer: Too many "smart" phones weren't smart enough to execute our search function on the whole database. So it had to go bye bye, for now.

Longer Answer: So Your Search Results (previously and still currently) feature all the factors listed above, then additionally narrowed in reverse based on that other member's search options as well.

So, everyone in your search results has already stated that THEY want to meet someone like YOU.

It's not just your search criteria, who you say you want to meet. It's who they say they want to meet TOO.

Not just on your end. Not just on their end. Mutual. Both ways.

In techie speak, it has extremely fine granularity. In everyday speak, it's hella complicated.

And increasingly, seemingly a LOT more in just the last few years, it really doesn't work on a lot of today's newer and cheaper mobile devices. No, we don't mean that we couldn't format search results so they would display inside a tiny window, that part is easier. We mean the the actual database search function itself, automated, with that whole list of stuff included automatically.

Much more complicated.

And we had to conclude that many of today's cheaper mobile devices are not capable of executing it. They just . . . give up and go blank.

So before we made this change, we were getting a lot of angry emails saying, "My phone won't display my search even though YOU JUST SENT ME AN EMAIL saying there were somebodies in there and WHY IS THAT?!?!?!?!??!????!"

And even more also increasingly . . . those particular emails were draining our will to live, just a tiny bit.

However, if we were to keep running this thing, we also knew we really didn't want to alter the essential granularity of the search function, because we still think it's cool. We like the intense ability to narrow down and weed out anyone that probably wouldn't be interested or interesting based on all those factors above, and think it's actually still a "function" that has real life social functionality.

So what to do?

We could slather warnings all over the site that say, "NO, THIS WILL PROBABLY NOT WORK on your cheaper "smart" phone / digital watch / fitbit / big left toe covered in glitter paint" or . . . create a different version of the site that often would.

(OK, maybe not the fitbit.)

How could we keep the finely grained search functionality AND have that actually display on some of the newer mobile devices that feature more or less a Cheeto as a processor chip?

Without the Cheetos throwing up their cheesy lil' hands in surrender, that is, thus leading to the aforementioned angry emails from their owners?

The solution we finally arrived upon is that the search results are no longer "live," meaning, executed on the fly, on demand, whenever the user clicks that button. What they now actually are is preloaded.

We're also now only admitting new folks once per week OR SO, possibly a lil' longer during any major American holiday or heatwave.    

So now everyone will now be rematched with everyone else according to any new changes in criteria for present members and addition of new members at the same time, then those results reloaded into your Search Results field, again, approximately weekly.

So in short, your Search Results won't change IMMEDIATELY after you change your Search Options.  But especially if your change was expanding your horizons demographically, you may very well see more members show up in there after a week or so.

We will also email you when new members appear in your Search Results.  They'll be at the beginning.  But we only email when new members appear.  It's also likely that members that signed up previously will periodically appear further down your list.  Those are folks that moved to your area and/or expanded their demographic Search Options to include you in some other way, selecting Everywhere, including your age range when it wasn't previously, etc.

We're afraid it's not possible to send email for each and every one of those appearances too, so you're on your own to notice when they appear . . . but again, the whole kit and kaboodle is right up at the top of the Home page of the forum, so it should be super easy anyway.

So the Cheetos are no longer required to even TRY to execute a complicated search function on demand. All they have to do is display that periodically preloaded content, which should be pretty easy for even the Cheetos to do.

updating

This also means that no, Your Search Results will not update automatically whenever you edit your profile. Your next search results member update will take place the next time we run an update on the whole database, not just whenever you update something on your own profile.

We can't tell you exactly how often that will be, but usually approximately weekly, possibly a lil' longer during any major American holiday or heatwave.

So in order to avoid confusion, we would strongly recommend giving some thought to what sort of folks you'd like to meet, choosing those search options on your profile accordingly, then just LEAVING it for the time being. Meaning, constant updates to your criteria will not produce immediate live changes, so they're likely to confuse both yourself and potentially other members too.

You should give a minute or two of thought to your situation and preferences, then let those search option criteria ride for as long as possible. By "as long as possible," no, we're NOT discouraging updating based on substantial life shifts, geographic moves, relationship availability changes, etc. If something did actually happen that would strongly suggest an update to your search options would be appropriate, then by all means, UPDATE.

What we do mean is that lots of frequent tiny changes will probably only lead to confusing the heck out of yourself. And possibly someone else.

(So maybe don't do that.)

the future

Yes, this whole thing means that those of you on desktops, laptops, decent tablets, and more competent iPhones no longer have instant Search Results available whenever you update your profile . . . you'll probably have to wait a few days. And we're disappointed about that too. However, those Cheeto emails were draining our will to live, for real.

We imagine we will reinstate a more fully automated function in the future . . . but only when we're fairly confident it will execute successfully on most cheaper mobile devices (whatever the next generation is, or next generation after that). We were forced to conclude that's just not the case right now for anything as complicated as our previous search function, no matter how we'd program it.

Meanwhile, as opposed to other site features regarding which we've already accepted much feedback and incorporated what was constructive . . . there really isn't anything at all anyone can say with regard to this that's going to serve any purpose other than getting on our very last nerve. Anyone who's even the slightest bit sensitive will have already intuited that the Cheeto situation has been a huge source of irritation for us.

Hence, unlike many site changes made in the past, we're really NOT inviting anyone to comment on this one.

Cheers, thanks a lot!