Ever since I wrote the post about the future trend of adultery more than half of my Google ads on my mainpage have been somehow related to dating or sex. There has been a plentiful of offers to meet and marry Asian, Chinese, Baltic, East-European, Moldovian and ladies of other origins. Relationship advice is also offered, which kind of completes the picture. Examples can be seen here (with some luck, ultimately it depends on Google):
There seems to be an abundance of this kind of ads. In principle I have nothing against this, specially now that Google seems to be getting the ads right on my single post pages (it used to put dating ads even to posts about environment). However, it did make me wonder about the question on how much is the web about sex, or more generally, somehow related to sex.
Most of the searches about the issue lead to this article by Cecil Adams who asked that very same question but concentrating purely on pornography. It was written in 2005, and the conclusion was that there are plenty of other things in the web besides porn (according to some estimates mentioned in the article it presented less than 1% share of all the webpages). In another, more recent (2008) article Tom Chatfield took a look on a list of the world’s most popular sites and was already wondering whether to declare cyberporn dead.
On the other hand, there are evidence pointing to the other direction as well. Middle East’s and North Africa’s web-traffic for example have been said to be very much sex-related (articles here (Wired 2001) and here (Afrol 2006(?)), former more outdated than the latter), some of the estimates put the figure at 80%. Whatever the truth is, I would imagine the situation to be roughly similar elsewhere. Furthermore, Adams mentions in his text that at the time of writing search word “sex” gave 214 million pages in Google. Now the figure is at (somewhat ironically) 699 million, meaning it has more than tripled. Then again, in the web, what hasn’t?
The thing that makes the estimation even more difficult is that even though related, it is still one thing what people search for and another what kinds of websites are out there. Google Trends provides some help by showing that “sex” is still one of the most popular search words in the web, even though there has not been much change for years. “Porn” on the other hand has been rising in popularity and was almost as popular as “sex” (because of the crisis perhaps..). Personally I was able to find only one searchword (“Facebook”) that was more popular than the two.
However, even this does not tell us the whole truth. Searches done with the word “sex” might also refer to other things. Vice versa, people might look for sexually explicit content by using other words than “sex”. Furthermore, sex can be also disquised in the sense it can be used in ads etc. in pages and sites that are not considered to be have nothing to do with sex. People who surf around Flickr might do so to find pictures of pretty girls instead of beautiful scenery. Ultimately, it can be very difficult to define which page, visit or search is really “sex-related”.
In any case, it seems safe to say that sex in all of its forms maintains a very strong position in the web. No matter how much we embrace the web as a solution to many of the big and small problems we face today, it also reflects our more primitive functions as well. Following the idea of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, before moving into solving those bigger problems we need to satisfy the more basic needs first. Apparently the web helps us to meet those needs. That might also be the reason why a bit under 40% of Americans would rather choose to have no sex for two weeks than to give up their Internet access for the same period; by giving up Internet you actually end up giving both, the Internet and the sex.
The answer why sex will never disappear from the net also lies there (even though some may wish so). Sex is too much in us, for obvious reasons, and the web provides such a convinient tool to get one’s hands on it. Eventually, that is all the internet is, a tool to share information (understood here in the broadest sense of the term). If it is education or knowledge that we search, it is very much out there in the web. If it is sex, there is no shortage of that either.
So far it seems to be more the latter. It might be a question of maturing, but in the end no matter how educated or civilised, we, or at least many of us, cannot completely forget that more biological side of us. Then again, as long as no one gets hurt or injured, why should we? In any case, I would still be interested to know how much of the internet traffic or sites are sex related. Thus, if there is anyone out there who has a clue or wants to throw in his/her 2 cents, please do so by leaving a comment.
