I've tried to use it as a gauge like this myself. It does offer
some indication, but it's weak, for the following reasons:
1. Variance in "who uses online dating". In some countries, a broad spectrum of women use online dating, in others it's kind of "bottom of the barrel" stuff -- women who couldn't get the attention in real life. For instance, I GPS spoofed to Brazil on Tinder, expecting to see all these hot beach girls, and instead was greeted by a gallery of monsters.
2. Variance in "why they use it". Some women are on there to get dicked. A lot are on there just for the attention. The ratio between those two groups will vary depending on country. The number of girls I've messaged and they simply didn't message back would probably be around 80%. That's on
Tinder where they've already indicated "yes" to you. Why? The attention is satisfying enough for them. Frankly I think Roosh's "no tinder" attitude is right on -- everything else has better payoffs unless you live somewhere slutty like the US and you're in the top looks bracket.
3. Variance in what kind of man they're looking for. I.e. "the image of a hot guy" they have. For instance, if you're a big tatted up roid head, a black and white topless photo of you with a thug expression will probably roll fine in western countries. In Japan, you'd need to soften it if you want the same breadth of appeal. Likewise a party boy image would play well in some countries, in others the upstanding wealthy man plays better. So you'd have to somehow perfectly calibrate the way you portray yourself to match each country's preference, to get solid data, which is impossible.
I suppose if you hypothetically were going to go this route, to harden the data as much as possible you'd try the following:
push all matches to a date. Have her agree to a date at a specific time. Then you cancel it the next day with some excuse. That way you'd get a count of how many women are seriously interested in meeting you, not just attention-seeking. Of course the obvious caveat would be if some hottie agrees, in which case you're going to be fuming
Basically, this is really hard. Even after being on here for almost 3 years now, I still get caught out with places turning out to be a bust for me, or a success for me, against what the data on this forum or any other source of data I've used has indicated. I just try to combine multiple sources of data, and even then I've gotten caught out.
There is also the contrarian play to consider. Do you not think most guys are thinking exactly the same way? For instance, one of the worst places to try and pick up girls in Tokyo is a place called "GasPanic". The reason is simple: 10 years ago it was a great place to pickup girls, the rumour spread, it now shows up on Google searches as "the best place to pickup girls in Tokyo", and hence it gets swarmed every weekend by hordes of hungry tourists. So sometimes the best places can be those with
the least indicators, since that means no other men of your type are receiving impetus to go there. Or at least that's a theory of mine. Everything goes in waves.