General

I wrote a complaint. The email is <james@ruraldating.co.uk>. Here's what I said--please feel free to take whatever seems useful and use it:

Hi,

I'm writing to let you know why I *won't* be using your site, in spite of it's appeal. Perhaps you'll change your policies, and I can consider joining up. I know these same issues affect other fat-aware potential users.

1. Please don't steal photos from other sites. We all know you've done it, and it JUST discredits you in the community.

2. Don't use the word 'overweight'. I'm not 'over' anything, except some fantasy produced by life insurance companies and swallowed by the medical profession and the general public. I am fat, plump, zaftig, juicy, cuddly, Rubenesque, chubby, abundant, and many other things, but I am NOT overweight. I am exactly the weight I am, and the only thing it's over is someone else's opinion of who I should be.

Thanks! I hope you decide to become a thoughtful site that doesn't steal photos and uses respectful language about fat people. I'd love to come use your site then.

Ok, I'll take the bait as digital marketing is my day job. (Yep,I get paid to arse about online!)

According to the traffic estimator in the Google Adwords system, there are the following number of searches globally for these terms:

Plus sized dating - 590 searches per month
Overweight dating - 2,900 searches per month
ssbbw dating - 1,600 searches per month
bbw dating - 49,500 searches per month

The above is a better indicator of what people are searching for. The figures you quoted just show how many sites that Google has indexed as having the relevant search terms included on them.

Hope that helps for reference purposes. Right, back off to lurk again