February 23, 2007 | Friday

Search hotter than porn for UK internet users

By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in News |Search Engines |Ask |Google |Search Research

The old joke is that the internet is just one giant network that is mostly used to access adult material, dwarfing all other ways in which people may use the web. New stats reveal that, for UK users, search now is a much more compelling reason to go online.

Hitwise, via Search Engine Land, has the stats:

In January, search engines accounted for 13.3% of all UK internet visits, compared with 11.5% for adult websites. The market share of UK internet visits to search engines grew 21% year-on-year in January, while Adult websites declined 14%. Search engines were [also] one of the fastest growing categories in January…

So how does that traffic break down by search terms across the various engines?

[T]he search terms that consumers enter into the leading search engines varies, in some cases quite dramatically. In particular, Google.co.uk searchers are more likely to be looking for web 2.0 properties and uk.ask.com searchers are more likely to search for generic products.