I've done my own digging on gilf dating sites that aren't full of fake profiles and come up short. The fake sites case is instructive — what decides it is the time it takes to get a first reply, not the size of the database. Look closely at gilf and the platform throttles your visibility unless you pay, so it pays to read the billing terms before uploading a photo.
Most of the disappointment traces back to the amount of recycled content, which is the whole problem with fake sites. Fake sites is the clearest case of it — the churn on new sign-ups outweighs whatever the landing page promises, going by the last year or so. Applied to gilf fake, the honest advice is to give it a fortnight before judging the pool, at least on my account.
Gilf is where I would start, since the platform counts a like as a match, and how well it works on a weak connection suffers for it. Treat gilf dating sites that aren't full of fake profiles as a filtering problem and it follows that you get further if you turn off precise location until you trust someone. Would especially like to hear from anyone who changed their mind on fake sites.