says a new research report.
It seems that sex and porn have been toppled from the top internet search topics, and replaced by business and
e-commerce related searches.
A few years back sex-related topics accounted for 17 per
cent of web searches, but that figure has shrunk to an unsexy 3.8
per cent, according to joint research between collaboration with Pennsylvania State University and a professor from Queensland University of Technology (Australia).
QUT’s Professor Amanda
Spinks said business and commerce related searches,
including buying and selling on the net, had outstripped sex to reach an astounding 30 per cent of web searches.
Around 30 million search sessions from search engines
including Alta Vista, AlltheWeb.com, Ask.com, Excite and
Dogpile were analysed. And they focused predominantly on searches done in the US
and Europe. Next in line after business and e-commerce were people, travel, places,
computers and the internet, health, education, then entertainment,
the study found.
Prof Spinks said there were many reasons why
sex-related topics had been knocked off the top search spot. “It could be the favourites are bookmarked or an overwhelming
increase in people looking for information,” Prof Spinks said.”and more women are searching the web. Back in the 90s, it was
probably young male geeks, but now the demographics are changing
with mums and dads, kids, grandmas and business people all
searching the web. The general population is searching now compared to the male
set in the 90s.”
Also Prof Spinks said “Back in the 90s, there wasn’t as much business information on
the web,” Prof Spinks. “Only with the dot-com boom in the late 90s have a lot of people
begun putting more information up and because the content changed
people became a lot more aware there were other things they could
find.”
“While the average time spent searching is creeping up, a lot of
people search for less than a minute,” Prof Spinks said. Her studies also showed that the average search session
comprised two or three words per query and two or three queries
each session.
Well the more about business, and the huge increase in buying and selling products and services searches can only be good news for we internet marketers… unless you happen to be in the porn game of course 