is targeted at 25- to 45-year-old singles, gay and heterosexual, and will be free to use until the autumn.
After the initial free period, customers will have to pay between €15-€25 (£11-£18) a month to use the service. Surfing the site and posting personal ads, however, will remain free.
The service, which also launches in Germany and France today, has already made an impact in the US. It debuted in 1997 and registered 16.3m users at the end of last year.
Yahoo's overall business strategy is to boost growth by rolling out successful US products overseas. The personals service is now up and running in Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
There are 10m single people in the UK and the market is expected to grow from £2.6m in 2002 to £14m by 2007, according to Jupiter Research. Traffic has already risen by 17% since the beginning of 2003.
The biggest UK online dating site at the moment is uDate.com, with a 30% market share, according to online intelligence service Hitwise. In second position is Gaydar, with 25% of the market.
Yahoo's UK and Ireland service already attracts 15m users each month, mostly ABC1 professionals aged between 18 and 45.
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