In the early days on facebook (actually not-so-early, but still many years ago) they opened up the ability to claim domain names for pages. For example, my facebook url is facebook.com/nevraumont – I got my last name because I claimed it first. A buddy and I also jumped at the chance to claim a whole bunch of other facebook urls.
If you had a “page” and that page had at least 20 “likes” you could claim any url you wanted. It was like the early days of the internet. A buddy and I got to work. We build pages, added ~5 links to them with relevant topics, bought facebook ads to get 20 likes, and then claimed urls. We have hundreds of them, about a dozen are really good.
One of my favorites is facebook.com/travel.
Over the years the two of us have tried to build side-businesses on top of the urls. It’s a lot harder than it looks. I am more than confident it’s possible if one were to work on it full time. Both of us have way too high opportunity costs to do that. If you (or someone you know) is interested in building a business on top of a premium facebook domain, let me know. We have names in the travel, weddings, automotive, education, financial and legal spaces (among others). Basically the categories that were making money though Google search at the time.
But I digress.
One of the businesses we build was StopoverTravel.com. The idea was to create a repository of tour companies, and then link to them for affiliate revenue. For fun I started writing content on the site. Once a week I would write about a cool thing to do in the world. The site still exists. If you are looking for travel inspiration, check it out. While this was happening, Google launched Google Surveys. It’s a very inexpensive way to survey people on the internet. I had some free credits so I gave it a try. My goal was to get results that could conceivably go viral (I will talk about why that is basically a terrible idea in another post).
This is that story.
What Google Doesn’t Like
The headline I wanted to run was something like: “People have a lot of sex on small group tours” I wanted to get data on how often it happened, how long the hook-ups lasted, and for even more fun: who it happened with.
My first survey design was set up like this:
Screening question: Have you ever gone on a small group tour? Anyone who said “No” would be eliminated and the next questions would only be asked to people who said “Yes” First question: “While on a small group tour, did you ever have sex with someone you met on tour?” The possible answers were things like, “No”, “Yes, with a fellow traveler”, “Yes, with a local”, “Yes, with the tour guide”
I thought it would be great.
Virality here I come!
I submitted.
Then I got this email from Google:
Thank you for using Consumer Surveys. However, your survey has not yet begun running.
We do not allow surveys to run with your submitted content per the Nudity, Obscenity, and other Adult Material.
We don’t allow surveys that contain nudity, obscenity or sexually suggestive material. Surveys should not relate to porn, dating with a sexual or mature nature or sexual aids & devices.
Please remove all references to adult material and re-submit.
Oops. Time for a new word for “sex”. I asked my partner. Here was his list:
- “Hook-up”
- “Casual relationship”
- “Physical relationship”
- “One night stand”
- “Make-out”
- “Go all the way”
- “Score with”
- “Become intimate with”
- “Biblically know someone”
(My partner is great)
I re-submitted the survey with the word “sex” replaced by the word “Hook-up” (in quotes).
I hit submit.
A day later I received another email from Google:
Thank you for using Consumer Surveys. However, your survey has not yet begun running.
We don’t allow surveys that contain nudity, obscenity or sexually suggestive material. Surveys should not relate to porn, dating with a sexual or mature nature or sexual aids & devices.
Please remove all references to adult material and re-submit.
Apparently no “hook-ups”. I tried again. This time replacing the offending language with “Did you ever begin a relationship (even if very short term)?” Google wrote me back:
Thank you for using Consumer Surveys. However, your survey has not yet begun running.
We do not allow surveys to run with your submitted content per the Nudity, Obscenity, and other Adult Material. The second question of your survey has innuendo of dating with a sexual/mature nature.
Please remove the part from your second question that reads “(even if very short term)”.
This question could work if it were about non-mature content. For example,
“While on a small group tour have you ever begun a relationship?”
Answer Choices: Yes – I met my future Spouse Yes – I made lifelong friends No
Answers that point to specifically who in the group (tour guide, locals, etc) and the language about “even if very short term” make the current question seem like it is about mature content.
Still a no. But at least they were being helpful now. I was speaking to a real human being who was making judgement calls. I made some more changes and wrote him back:
Thanks,
Is there another subject you’d like to run a survey about? If so, please note that the entire survey is editable – including the name, description and all the questions. If not, please let us know and we are happy to issue you a refund for this survey.
We appreciate your giving our product a try and want you to have a stellar experience!
Warm regards,
Oops. I think I pushed too far. I took a different tactic:
Hi,
Radio silence. I wrote back again:
Have you ever gone on a small group tour to another country or state? (Examples: Gap, Intrepid, Contiki, Odyssey, etc.)
- No
- Yes, by myself
- Yes, as part of a couple
- Yes, with friends or a friend
Only people who did not answer “No” were asked the next two questions. The next two questions that were approved:
While on a traveling with a small group tour did you ever begin a relationship?
- No
- Yes, I met my future spouse
- Yes, it lasted until the end of the tour
- Yes, we continued dating after the tour
- Yes, but it was over quickly
I am especially impressed with my writing skills on that last possible response… The final question:
While traveling to another country or state on a small group tour did you ever begin a relationship?
- No
- Yes, with a fellow traveler
- Yes, with someone from that country
- Yes, with someone running the tour
- I’ve never been on a tour
By the time we collected all the data I had lost interest in actually putting together (and promoting) the blog post: “Sex on Tour”. Three years later I thought it might be interesting to pull up the old data and share it with the readers here on Marketing Is Easy.
Here are the fun insights: 
Already some cool, if not viral-quality data.
About 18% of people surveyed on the internet have gone on some sort of small group travel tour. That seems a little high, but believable. Of the people who went on a tour, about 20% hooked-up at some point. Also seems pretty believable, especially given that many of these tours cater to singles. We even see that in the data, with about 75% of people NOT going as part of a couple. The range in the hook-up rate from 18.6-20.7% comes from the fact that the survey gave slightly different answers to the next two questions. The fact that it asked different people these next two questions, and the results were so close is another sign the data is legitimate.
Now the fun part.
Of the people that said they hooked-up (I will continue to use the word, even though Google wants me to say “started a relationship”), here is how long the relationships lasted and who the hook up was with: 
How fun is that data?
About 40% of the people who hook-up end up getting married! Or about 20% x 40% = 8% of people who have gone on a small group tour got married to someone they started a relationship with there. Since about 20% have gone on a tour, that means it drives 1.6% of people in the US got married to someone they met on tour.
Wow.
People may have mis-interpreted the question, but directional it’s a little heart warming. Most of those “Tour Hook-ups” actually lead to post-tour relationships and even marriage. Cool.
Who these travelers are hooking up with is a little less surprising. About half with another traveler. A third with someone they meet locally. And about 19% with the Tour Guide.
Before I sign-off, let’s do a little reverse engineering. We know 20% of traveler hook-up, about 20% with the tour guide. It translates into 3.2% hooked-up with the guide. Let’s say there are 5 people on an average small-group tour (Many of these tours gap out at 12, and I know I’ve been on many tours where there were only two of us. Five seems reasonable). Let’s also say that of the people who have been on tours, they have been on an average of 3 tours (that is a totally made-up number, but you would guess that a lot of people are one-and-done). That means the chance of an individual hooking-up with the guide on an individual tour is about 3.2%/3 = ~1%. Flipping it to the guide’s perspective, with five people on the tour, that gives him or her a ~5% chance of hooking-up with one of them (or a 95% of not hooking-up)
If the average tour is a week, and a guide works the full year, with two-weeks vacation, that gives an average guide 50 chances a year to hook-up. The chance of that not happening 50-times in a row is about (1- (95%^50)) 7.7%.
Unfortunately Google doesn’t allow me to cut the data across questions,so I can’t tell you the odds of those Tourist-Guide hook-ups turning into weddings. But if we assume the odds are the same as inter-traveler romance, one gets to the inevitable conclusion that if someone works as a Guide for 5 years they have almost a 100% chance of being married to someone they guided.
Any current or former Guides reading this? Does this level of debauchery match with your experience?