IStock Photo 11822190 © Amanda Rohde

With all the big claims made by online dating sites, we might imagine that more relationships and marriages than ever were originating online. A new study sponsored by Match.com has some intriguing numbers.

Of course we must take note of the source when we get new information like this, especially when it’s an interested party. The claim by Match’s competitor, eHarmony, that it is responsible for “driving” 2% of all US marriages has received a lot of scrutiny, and rightly so.

And while the new survey does refer to dating sites in general, it also found, happily for the corporate sponsor, that twice as many married people had met their future spouse through Match.com than its nearest competitor.

The research shows that online dating sites are the third most common way people meet future partners, after work/school and family/friends. 1 in 5.88 newly married people in the sample (married in the past five years) had met their spouse online. While there’s no denying that’s a substantial proportion, a look at the survey itself reveals that this number has held steady over the past three years. So in terms of where people meet their better halves, dating websites have a respectable, but a steady, share.

Church, like online dating sites, held its own at 1 in 25. The one venue whose popularity dropped was “bars/clubs/other social events,” from 11% over the past three years to 8% in 2009/2010.

The survey also reports that 1 in 5 people in a new committed relationship (including marriages) met through online dating. Unlike the marriage statistic, this more general finding wasn’t matched with an earlier one for comparison. But if it’s true that 20% of committed relationships originate online, there’s only one conclusion we can draw: in spite of all the lying people do on their profiles, and the dashed hopes and difficulties of dating in general, it’s hard to conceive of the online dating industry as anything but a modern success story.