How much where you live influences match quantity

I did the match estimator worksheet many moons ago but I wanted to see some real perspective on this matter. I came up with an easy experiment to conduct and you can repeat it for yourself to see if where you live is “holding you back”.

You need an account on another dating service, OkCupid (it’s free), PlentyOfFish, Match.com, etc. that will indicate how many matches it finds for a given search, since eHarmony isn’t conducive to this but the results should translate
Set (very) basic criteria for your ideal match in the search fields for your locality and get a baseline
Substitute in various cities with the same search criteria

So, with the exact same criteria but only changing cities (the search I ran was of those living a 25 mile radius from the specified city):

Miami, FL = 240
Pittsburgh, PA = 320
Atlanta, GA = 470
Washington, DC = 900
Chicago, IL = 1100
San Francisco, CA = 1200
Los Angeles, CA = 1400
New York, NY = 2500

Conclusions:

Seeing the scale/difference of a larger population center, it makes sense why I almost always got closed out by those living near them. There are plenty of matches much closer to them and they don’t see the point in a long-distance relationship.
Based on this, it really seems as if eHarmony’s selling point of try and cast a wide net just won’t work well, because at the core, people prefer convenience and trying to start a long-distance relationship is going to be doomed for most, except the lucky few but who knows…maybe you’ll be one of the lucky few.