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Porn Site Breaks Down Searches By Country (techcrunch.com)
86 points by aaronbrethorst on March 13, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 63 comments



That's kind of fascinating. Just looking around a bit, it seems very common in most parts of the world covered to search for one's own nationality as the most common term (Norwegians looking for Norway, Argentines looking for Argentina, etc). Americans seem to look for genres like teen, lesbian, mom, bbw, etc. Even big states like CA, NY, or TX don't seem interested in searching for people from their own states.

I don't know how representative the samples are, nor how correct my impression is, but I found it interesting.


I'd imagine that's because much of the net is US-centric by default and there's less variance/no language barrier between NY/CA/TX, as there would be between, say, Brazil/Argentina or Germany/Norway.


I'm guessing that because watching someone who speaks (and moans) your own language removes an artificiality barrier and makes it more authentic. Like a girl next door kind of thing.


Indeed. If you look at Japan the entire top 10 is dominated by variations on "japanese".


I'm guessing that this site is biggest in one country (USA?) and alot of those other countries have small sample sets to go on. Searches in many non-US countries are very specific to one porn star, which seems odd.

Would need data on traffic by country to clarify that. If this kind of thing is important to you, that is...


Checked out some European countries and most seemed to have reasonable results until I got to Iceland. The results from Iceland do indeed suggest the sample set is way too small for some regions.


How about countries like Romania... 'Mom and son'. -What?


That one is listed for Hungary too. Looking at local sites and it seems that it's quite a popular fetish here.


After living in Hungary I picked up on the fact that mother/son relationships are not what they are in the rest of the world and what we in the States would consider too close. I heard that it wasn't uncommon for married men to take their laundry home to their mother's house on the weekend, etc. Western Romania is still strongly ethnically Hungarian, so that could account for the similar prevalence there.


You heard right. Nudity is also more prevalent than in the western cultures, it's completely normal for a child to see their parents naked, even in their teens and beyond.


Is there much of a fetish for gay koreans and gay grandpas in Hungary?

It seems more likely the results are dominated by searches from one person, especially when there are no results for Slovakians or most of the Balkan states at all.


Yes, the sample is probably small, but Hungarians like some really, really weird shit. Here's an English [1] and a Hungarian [2] article about extreme porn in the country. Porn is culture here. One of the biggest porn directors [3] a is household name and is considered a celebrity.

As for Gay Grandpas, well searching for "Gay Grandpa Sex" [4] yields 29 700 results.

[1]: http://www.pestiside.hu/20100128/police-raid-the-only-effect...

[2]: http://www.nol.hu/archivum/archiv-506693

[3]: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1018310/

[4]: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=meleg%20nagy...

(edit: formatting)


On the same note, everybody in Peru would be searching for gay porn if their sample set was representative.


well, i'm glad chile has company.


How about countries like Ukraine... 'Raincoat (gay)'


Finland seems like a kinky place. Top three results:

1) mature 2) granny 3) male ejaculation (gay)


Some of these just come across as though someone said, "We have to come up with ten search terms for each state and country - do something so that every location gets ten results!":

1) Kentucky's #1 search term is "free gay porn" - pretty specific relative to all the other terms elsewhere

2) Iowa's #6 is "backroom casting couch" but Wyoming's #3 is "brcc". That's either poor data warehousing practices, or an intentional choice to say "People who type the term in are differentiated from people who use the acronym." I'm assuming that it's poor data warehousing or small sample size given how "milf" is in almost every state but not one state has the fully-spelled out version.

3) Mississippi's results are skewed relative to what most people think about Mississippi. For a state that is supposed to be 60% Caucasian[1], their top search terms are not very Caucasian-like. I'm thinking small sample size here.

4) Connecticut's #10 result is "lisa ann"

5) Maine has both "ebony" and "black" as top search terms

6) Most of the South American listings have some variation of the country name.

7) Every result in Peru is gay. Clearly this is either small sample size, marketing, or "other".

I'm surprised more people aren't focusing on the "dirty data" (pun intended). Clearly something is weird with the data - it's either working on small sample sizes, or there's been some poor work done to get it to this point (not enough work done, for example).

[1] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/28000.html


"lisa ann" comes up in a large number of countries, too. I'm really not sure how to interpret that.

Israel's #3 search was "college rules". Not "college".

Nigeria's #3 search was "things i jack off to".


milf isn't a great acronym to use for your example, it is exclusively used as "milf" and very rarely fulled "spelled out" unless you're quoting American Pie.

good points though.


As I saw this news story over and over on different sites, all I thought was.. who is the PR genius behind this?

What better way to establish yourself "The World's Biggest Porn Search Engine." than having non-porn media legitimize you for free?


What is a "porn search engine"? Wouldn't google be the biggest?


It very well might not be, depending on how you define "porn search engine". If you mean "search engine on which porn searches are ever conducted", then sure. Otherwise, it's far more up in the air.


I assume it's a more direct aggregator :)


Having worked on search engines for over 10 years and seen what people search for first hand from the logs, these lists are the PG-13 version. Which is for the best. Some things cannot be un-seen.


So can we get a Rated R version?


You don't even need that level of work experience.

Any reasonably frequently updated personal blog that covers a wide-ish range of topics will have some truly bizarre search traffic referrals.

(or maybe it was just mine? Perish the thought..)


I'm not looking forward to that with Nuuton. O_O


Hm. They labeled Oregon "Nevada", there is no info on how many searches these lists represent, and I'm not sure what half of these terms mean (most bizarrely "Straight (gay)"?) - but otherwise it's very interesting. I would have assumed a priori that stereotypical national fetishes feature more clearly, but instead people seem to search for their own country in the first place.


> (most bizarrely "Straight (gay)"?)

There's a whole subgenre of gay porn featuring 'straight' men having sex with other men.

It varies from 'guys who look "passably" straight' to 'guys who are "straight" and have girlfriends but get tricked/coerced into having sex with other men".


Massachusetts and Connecticut have also merged apparently.


Wow, South America really, really likes gay porn. Look at Peru--every one of the top searches is tagged "(gay)". I wonder why that is; are many Peruvians gay? Do straight Peruvians simply not view porn?


I think if you look around, there's a relationship between how tolerant/non-tolerant a country is and the frequency of 'gay' searches.

which makes sense. Non-tolerance will make anonymous/private transactions more appealing.


i think they may be based on very small sample sizes.


or straight peruvians simply use a different search engine for their porn.


Strange how Asian is top ten USA, even moreso than Ebony considering there are more African-American men and women in the U.S. than Asians. The more general terms (Teen, College, Creampie) would most likely primarily show Caucasian stars.


One reason for this is that "ebony" gets split with "black", whereas "asian" isn't strongly split by anything else.


India likes rape.


And chinese dig japanese


japanese porn is dominant in asia, largely because production of porn is illegal in china and korea.


and India


japanese porn is popular in india?


And Kentucky favors gay porn. I wonder about the sample size.


I imagine the data is accurate. It's the same for a lot of conservative countries. I imagine they have less of an outlet to express their sexuality, so they search for porn. (E.g., people in New York wouldn't need as much gay porn---they have Grindr).


Check out the preponderance of ebony porn and black gay porn in the Deep South. Virginias, Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map for comparison...


Most of these groups are very small with little influence (though some are very active politically, though it isn't listed, the Sons of Confederate Veterans loves to make life hard for state legislators and Governors). Many of these are literally holes in the wall, like The Redneck Shop in SC (not discrediting racism in the SE, but most people have other things to do with their time).

What is really going on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Black_belt_counties.png

Also you have a disproportionate number of historically black colleges in the South as compared to the rest of the US. Upper-middle black households are more likely to send their kids to schools like Spelman and Morehouse and if kids like anything, they like sex.


Awesome, thanks for this, this is good data literacy


That's also where the majority of the black population lives[1], so it's not much different than asians being high in California. I don't think your correlation to racism has much to do with it, at least not in the way it seems you are implying.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_2000_black_percent.gi...


Well...

Blacks are still a minority in these places. I know they are a minority in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. I think it is probably a combination of blacks and whites searching on 'Ebony' that makes it come out on top in the data. Just as in California I strongly suspect a combination of Asians and Whites searching on 'Asian' places that term high in their data.


Or more likely, white people don't have to specify "white" in their searches because most mainstream porn is already "white". If that wasn't the case, I'd bet "white" or "caucasian" would be the top search in every single state.

Sure there are probably quite a few white people that also search for ebony porn. But I doubt it's that much higher amongst whites in the south vs. whites in the north. And even if it is, it's probably not a correlation to racism as the parent post was implying.


"...Sure there are probably quite a few white people that also search for ebony porn. But I doubt it's that much higher amongst whites in the south vs. whites in the north..."

That's an interesting question. It would be illustrative to get the data for that. My own wager would be that it is slightly higher... just as searches by whites on 'Asian' is slightly higher in California than it is in ... say ... North Dakota. But that data would be telling.

In any case... I do agree with you that it's not "cross burning racism" that is driving these searches. My own suspicion is that it's probably more a matter of simply close 'proximity' combined with the natural difficulty of starting those relationships in the first place.

But of course data would be needed to validate any of this.


> My own suspicion is that it's probably more a matter of simply close 'proximity' combined with the natural difficulty of starting those relationships in the first place.

I see what you're saying, and I think you'd likely be correct. Would be interesting to see how high of a difference that might potentially be, would need the hard data instead of an infographic unfortunately :/


I think in the deep South there is still a 'taboo' of sorts on relationships with blacks. Leading to more searches on 'Ebony' as fewer people experiment with it. A phenomenon similar to the data from other more conservative nations where the top search becomes *(Gay). It's just a 'safe' outlet.

The presence of places like Spelman probably magnifies the effect. I'd wager that if you put the college for the daughter's of the nation's elite blacks in the middle of say... Iowa... the number of searches on 'Ebony' would shoot up in Iowa as well.


I imagine it's related to the infamous gang rape tape---a sort of morbid curiosity.


People in iceland like strange stuff, compared to other european countries.

edit: as other people noted, the sample size is probably too small there.


Its interesting how most of the "racist" southern states(sc,ga etc) have ebony as the top search term.


Bug: It thinks Oregon is Nevada.


Have you seen Peru? How does that country sustain itself


What are you insinuating?


now i need to go watch what a creampie is. it's rather popular here in the US


I'd honestly advise using Urban Dictionary instead. A creampie may or may not be disgusting, but if it is, you'd probably prefer a textual description.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=creampie


libya's number one is "silver daddies (gay)."

I am curious but also slightly worried about what it will be.


Lebanon: into weird stuff.


ohh lord the middle east needs some help finding the good/non-whacked out material




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