In addition, independent verification is needed by researchers unassociated with a dating website
Of those who had met in the two years prior to the study, 23% of heterosexual couples and 61% of gay couples had met through 
the Internet
In a recent published study, Carter and Buckwalter (2009), scientists at eHarmony, compared a group of 157 couples who had been matched through eHarmony with a comparable group of couples (matched on marriage length and age of spouses) who were recruited through a pling procedure. On a number of variables that referred to personality, affect, and values, the couples who had been matched through the eHarmony site were more similar than those who met in other ways. In addition, the online matched couples had higher satisfaction scores, as indicated by their scores on Dyadic Adjustment scale. Similar results had been found in an earlier study reported by Carter and Snow (2004), using a similar sampling procedure.
In a recent study not funded by a dating website, Sociologist Rosenfeld (2010) analyzed a new data set, Wave 1 of the «How Couples Meet and Stay Together.» The sample consisted of a U.S. national representative sample of 4002 individuals, 3009 who were partnered. Rosenfeld found that the Internet has clearly gained in importance as a way to meet partners. Rosenfeld compared couples, based on how they met, on a relationship quality score, and found no significant differences. In additional analyses that controlled for a large number of variables, including relationship duration, how the couple met continued to be unrelated to relationship satisfaction.