Online dating is big business. According to comScore Media Matrix, Yahoo! Personals and Match.com are the most active sites, drawing 5.3 million and 3.9 million unique monthly visitors, respectively. Because relationship-seekers are also willing to pay for online introductions, the services help diversify the revenue mix. With 99% of its revenues still coming from advertising, Google would be more stupid than Cupid to forgo a shot at a high-margin niche that would help grow its ever-expanding reach.

I beg to differ. Having worked with a company involved in the online dating industry, I can tell you how difficult that space is right now. Just this weekend, the WSJ highlighted the slowdown of online dating with growth for this year dropping from double digits to just 7%.

Unless Google can find a way to utilize AdWords so that they can offer a free service, it makes no sense to spend the time and money entering a market where the existing revenue model (paid subscriptions) is seeing a slowdown.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Users of Google Romance enjoy an all-expenses-paid romantic evening in exchange for viewing contextually relevant advertising throughout the course of the date.

“Our mission, as you might have heard, is to organize the world’s information,” said Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president, product management. “And let’s face it: in what area of life is the world’s information more disorganized than romance? We thought we could use our search technology to help you find that special someone, then send you on a date and use contextual ads to help you, ya know – close the deal.”

You can see more details at the Google Romance FAQ or via the press release – be sure to check out the all new Google “boiler plate” at the end of the release.

Nice work guys!

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Mountain View, CA (Apr. 1): The arrival of Google Romance delivers the ability to “Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google” through its just released Soulmate Search. Users can upload a romantic profile (or multiple profiles if they are desperate losers) similar to the process used with Google Base.

After finding a suitable, or at least ambulatory match, Google (NASD:GOOG) will arrange a Contextual Date, with all expenses paid. Google plans to finance what should be an incredibly popular service with a tertiary stock offering of 5.3 million shares; the company announced yesterday it would price those shares at $389.75, to yield nearly $2.1 billion in proceeds.

Google described the process on the Google Romance site. Here are some key points about the service:

“Our mission, as you might have heard, is to organize the world’s information,” said Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president, product management. “And let’s face it: in what area of life is the world’s information more disorganized than romance? We thought we could use our search technology to help you find that special someone, then send you on a date and use contextual ads to help you, ya know – close the deal.”

“Our internal projections say Contextual Dating is going to be unbelievably huge, just a total cash cow,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

UPDATE! The Google Romance project is in trouble already. Sources tell WPN that the service inadvertently matched the imaginary PR blogger Amanda Chapel of Strumpette fame, and Micro Persuasion and Edelman blogger Steve Rubel.

Considering the rancorous discourse between the two, and the likelihood of messy and very public lawsuits, it is reasonable to believe Google or its PR firm Ogilvy will soon try to sweep the whole mess under the rug by saying Google Romance is an April Fool’s joke. If that happens, Google may change the Romance site’s links to reflect the PR push to promote Google Romance as a joke instead of a serious product debut.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.