Googling your date is now the norm in UK dating. A coach explains the two-minute safety check that helps — and the deep search that quietly wrecks the date.
Lauren, 32, from Cardiff, sat on the edge of her bed on a Tuesday night with two tabs open. One was her Wisp profile. The other was Google. She’d been chatting to a guy called Marcus for three days. He’d asked her out — Wednesday, a wine bar she liked in Pontcanna. And now she was hovering over the search box, wondering whether typing his name into it made her sensible or insane.
She did it. Of course she did it.
She found his LinkedIn, his half-abandoned Instagram, and a photo of him at a charity 10K from 2019. None of it changed her mind. She still went. But she spent the first twenty minutes of the date wondering whether her brain would ever go back to the version of him she’d had before the search.
She isn’t the only one. Wisp’s user survey from earlier this year found that 71% of UK women aged 25 to 40 have Googled a date before meeting them at least once. Among men, the figure is 58%. The behaviour is so common it’s now the default — and yet almost no one talks about whether it’s actually good for the date.
So we asked a dating coach. Erin Maddox has worked with hundreds of clients across the UK and runs a private practice in Bristol. Here’s what she had to say.
“So — should we be Googling our dates at all?”
“Honestly, yes. With caveats. The world has changed. You’re meeting a stranger you found on an app, and you’ve got a phone in your hand that can tell you whether they’re who they say they are in about ninety seconds. Not using it would be slightly absurd.”
“What I push back on is the depth of the search. There’s a difference between a safety check and a forensic biography. One is sensible. The other will sabotage your date before you’ve taken your coat off.”
“What does a safety check actually look like?”
“It’s the basics. Do they exist as a real person? Does their name match the one on the app? Is there a LinkedIn, a public Instagram, anything that confirms they’re a normal human and not a profile someone built last week. Most people can do this in under two minutes.”
“The second part is anything that genuinely worries you. If something in the conversation felt off, follow that instinct. Trust your gut. A safety check should make you feel safer, not anxious.”
“That’s where it should end. The moment you start clicking onto page three of the results, you’ve left the safety zone and entered the spiral.”
“Why does that matter? What’s the harm in just knowing more?”
“Because dating is meant to be discovery. The whole point of a first date is sitting across from someone and finding out who they are in real time. If you’ve already read their Strava times, found their ex’s wedding photos, and watched a video of them speaking at a work event from 2018 — you don’t get to discover them anymore. You get to fact-check them.”
“And people sense it. They can feel when you already know things you shouldn’t know yet. The whole evening becomes a performance instead of a conversation.”
“What if I find something I don’t like?”
“Then you’re already in trouble. You’re deciding whether to go on a date based on a six-year-old Twitter screenshot or a slightly cringe podcast appearance. Neither of those things is the person who’s about to walk into the bar to meet you.”
“People grow. People change. The dating app version of them is already an edit — and so was that thing you found online. Judge them in the room, not in a tab.”
“Is there a healthier alternative to spiralling on Google?”
“Yes. Ask better questions before you meet. On Wisp especially — because the app pushes you towards actually meeting up rather than messaging forever — there’s only a short window to exchange a few real messages. Use it well. One or two genuine, specific questions will tell you more than twenty minutes of internet archaeology ever could.”
“And if you really need reassurance, send your location to a friend, tell them where you’re going, and meet in a public place. Those are the things that actually keep you safe. Knowing his middle name from a 2014 alumni page does not.”
So where does that leave Lauren in Cardiff?
The date went well, by the way. She didn’t mention the Google search. He turned out to be funnier than his messages had suggested. She left after one drink because she had work the next day, and texted him on the way home to say she’d had a nice time. Two days later they were planning the second one.
She told me she’s still going to Google. But she’s going to do the two-minute version, not the two-hour one. “I think I was using it to feel in control,” she said. “But the date is the bit that actually matters. The internet’s not going to do that part for me.”
If you’re tired of search histories full of people you never actually met, Wisp is built for the meeting up part — not the endless lead-up.