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TORONTO - Online dating is clicking in a big way with singles, with Internet love connections outpacing all forms of matchmaking in the U.S. besides meeting through friends, according to a research analysis.

While web-based courtship has seen a boom in business on both sides of the border, researchers caution those looking for love to be mindful of sites touting a science-based approach to matching potential partners.

Researchers say any scientific claims by online dating sites related to their compatibility matching "should be given very little credence" since they haven't been independently substantiated.

"There's no published evidence to support that claim," said study co-author Harry Reis, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester.

"The services that do this — although they do report claims on their websites and in the occasional commentary that they publish elsewhere, there is no published research that substantiates what they do or how they've done it."

The team of U.S. psychology academics from Northwestern, Texas A&M, UCLA and Illinois State University reviewed more than 400 studies and public interest surveys. The report was commissioned by the Association for Psychological Science and will be published in the February edition of its journal, Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

Reis said a key focus was to look at existing literature on romantic relationships to explore how they're formed and developed, as well as how people make choices and communicate in close relationships.

He said there are both "good sides and drawbacks" to online dating.

"Certainly the advantage is that you can find someone who is quite compatible with something that might be very important to you," Reis said from Rochester, N.Y.

"On the other hand, it constrains people greatly in that it closes them to the possibility that someone who's not in that category could actually turn out to be a very satisfying relationship partner."

By precluding those possibilities, people are narrowing their options, he noted.

Reis said what is clearly distinctive about online dating is that, in most cases, individuals have a substantial amount of information at their disposal about a potential partner before even meeting.

"When used properly — and particularly for people whose lives have limited choices — to have more choice is undoubtedly a good thing. On the other hand, we find that people often use suboptimal strategies in making those choices," he said.

"People are not really good at choosing between large numbers of options, especially when they pay limited attention to each of the options. Simply sorting through profiles as if they were characteristics that you might have of a car or a pair of pants is not the right way to evaluate who would be a good person to date."

For those using online dating sites to find love, Reis said they should approach profiles not as a checklist of characteristics but to think about the person as a whole.

"... Think about: 'Is this someone that I might be able to have a pleasant conversation with?'; 'Is this someone that might be an enjoyable partner to go on a vacation with?'" he said.

"Try and really think about the whole person, not as a series of disembodied characteristics but as a person you would be talking to, interacting with and those sorts of things."