2014 Year In Review

2014 was a huge year for us here at Pornhub HQ. We put our team of statisticians to work time and time again to deliver the data and bring you the most fascinating facts having to do with the world’s #1 porn site. Focusing largely on search trends and how user interactions react to major events around the world, we’ve covered everything from the traffic changes during the recent Scottish referendum to America’s obsession with anal sex and everything in between. Be it sports, politics, climate or demographic related, we found a way to relate it to porn trends and offer up some awesome insights. Today, we’re going to relive the magic one more time and take a long and hard look at how Pornhub’s user habits have evolved over the course of the past year, when compared to our 2013 review, as well as introduce some exclusive new and updated data. Let’s get started!

THE BARE BASICS

Overall, Pornhub saw a whopping 78.9 billion video views through 2014, which considerably surpasses last year’s 63.2 billion. Specifically, this breaks down to 18.35 individual visits to the site over the course of the year, translating to about 5800 visits per second. However you look at it, that’s a lot of people getting busy on Pornhub!

Now let’s take a look at the 20 countries that deliver the most traffic to Pornhub and how their rankings stood up in 2014. The United States accounts for the lion’s share of international traffic, with just under 40% and holds it down in first place. India climbed an impressive 3 positions here to nab 4th place for most visits to the best site in the world, with the Phillippines and Egypt also repping Pornhub more in 2014 as made evident by their respective 8 and 5 rank climbs.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

If Pornhub users all over the world are thirsty for one thing in particular, it’s teen-themed porn, as ‘teen’ was the most searched term in the world both this year and last. Coming in at number 2 with an impressive 7 place gain is ‘lesbian,’ with ‘MILF” taking a slight hit, falling into 3rd place and down from last year’s 2nd. Some interesting gainers here are the step-family themed searches, with ‘step mom’ climbing up 14 slots to land in at 4th place, and ‘step sister’ reaching up 53 spots to land in at this year’s 13th place. Group themed porn searches like ‘threesome’ and ‘gangbang’  also made some impressive leaps, having climbed 31 and 14 positions respectively. The world witnessed some interesting get-togethers on Pornhub this year!

When we look at the search terms that gained the most, proportionally speaking, from last year’s numbers, the results make up a really interesting spread. Topping things off with a significant 328% gain is ‘lesbian seduces straight girl,’ followed by ‘shemale fuck girl’ at 191%. There is some extended family fun up in there too, with ‘step sister’ and ‘step mom’ each seeing a 132% and 94% popularity increase, respectively.

In this chart, we compare our top 20 countries once again alongside their respective top 5 searches. A theme that immediately emerges at a first glance is that most countries feature their own nationalities and variants thereof among their top searches. This is something that we have noticed in several of the countries we have profiled, namely Germany, Russia, the Netherlands and Mexico. It will be interesting to see if this same theme continues throughout 2015, or if these step-relative searches will take over around the globe! Standing out here is Spain, where interestingly ‘Indian’ appears to be the 5th most searched term in the country. Bollywood bad girl Sunny Leone (NSFW) is also the most sought after porn star in Spain, which confirms that Spaniards definitely have a special place in their, er, hearts for that special kind of Indian spice. Lady-on-lady love also made some impressive gains in English speaking countries with 12, 14, 15 and 1 place climbs in Canada, Australia, the US and the UK respectively, the latter noting a first place claim and a dethroning of ‘british’ as the most popular search term there. These impressive gains indicate that last year, ‘lesbian’ wouldn’t have made it anywhere near the top 5 in most of these countries last year and show a huge growing preference for girl-on-girl porn.

TOP TO BOTTOM SEARCH IN THE USA

Some really interesting changes in search trends took place in America this year. For instance, ‘lesbian’ overtook ‘teen’ in 1st place for the most searched term throughout the country over the course of the year, making an impressive 15 place climb. Incidentally, 2014 was also a huge year for gay marriage in the States, with 19 states having ruled in favor of legalizing gay marriage. This brings the total number of states where this is permitted up to 35, and significantly marks 2014 as the biggest year for gay marriage to date. Tolerance is a beautiful thing! ‘Ebony’ also climbed a whopping 94 spots to its current 6th position, indicating a considerable increase in the American desire for more of this type of content. Step-relative searches also climbed the ranks in 2014 with ‘step mom’ claiming second place with a 6 place gain and ‘step sister’ shooting up 27 places into 8th place.

The biggest proportional gainers note a strong appreciation for added value through bigger portion sizes, with ‘big tits’ and ‘bbw’ increasing in popularity by 410% and 235%. Bigger is better! 2014 was also a huge year for twerking and butts in general, which may explain ‘big booty’ coming in as the biggest gainer by far, with a colossal 486% increase in popularity.

THE BABES THAT REALLY BROKE THE INTERNET

And now on to the main attraction: pornstars. These supernatural women of unworldly proportions are a huge part of what keep so many people flocking to Pornhub day after day, so let’s take a closer look at which ones got you the hottest in 2014. Tack one more glorious year onto the reign of her majesty Lisa Ann, (NSFW) the unconquered queen of porn and this year’s number one ranked porn star on the best adult site in the world. Despite the fact that ‘MILF’ as a search term lost a few popularity points this year, this goddess of mom porn is still killing it, alongside stoner babe Madison Ivy (NSFW) in at 2nd position and anal queen Asa Akira (NSFW) in 3rd. Alt angel Christy Mack (NSFW) sizzles in 4th place and adult industry champion Brandi Love (NSFW) closes out our top 5 for the year with some more MILFy goodness. Sizzling newcomer Mia Khalifa (NSFW) has recently claimed the number 1 spot from Queen Lisa Ann – let’s see if she can hold on to her throne through 2015.

2014 was also a huge year for our dear Pornhub Intern (NSFW) and famed Duke freshman Belle Knox. This barely legal babe was the biggest gaining porn star this past year, with a hugely impressive 4408 rank gain in popularity. A+ Belle! Brunette babe August Ames got shown some serious love this year too, with a 3019 position increase in searches, as did reality vixen Mimi Faust, up 1976 slots.

WHEN DOES EVERYONE WATCH THE MOST PORN?

Of our top 20 countries, dreary November proved to be the most popular month of the year for site activity, which marks a departure from both 2012 and 2013, where January saw the most traffic. Overall, late fall into early winter is the time of year that sees the most traffic by far, with the exception of Spain where they are busiest on Pornhub in September. Nothing cures the winter blues like Pornhub!

The same remedy apparently applies to cases of the Mondays, as this is overall the most popular day for site traffic, which remains the same as last year. Interestingly, the time of year which sees the most significant dip in traffic comes right after the peak, in the early spring. March, as opposed to last year’s August, is the slowest month for Pornhub around the world on average, followed by February. Spain breaks the mold once again alongside Germany and Brazil where they prefer to slow down a little more in the summer month of June.

INTERNATIONAL LASTING POWER

Pornhub users around the world know how to make the good times last. The Philippines really stood out, where the average visit duration spans a leisurely 12 minutes and 40 seconds. As we previously reported, according to data from wearesocial.sg, the Philippines outranked all other Asian-Pacific countries for time spent on the Internet each day (6+ hours) and clearly, a good amount of that time is being spent on Pornhub. Efficiency is the name of the game in Egypt, where visits last a mere 6:48 on average, but comparatively extend to well over 9 minutes in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Australia.

Some honorable mentions have to be made here to a few countries that aren’t necessarily in our top 20 but have some impressive endurance skills. Nepal takes the cake with a lengthy 13 minute and 39 second average visit duration, followed by the Dominica at just over 13 minutes, though Internet speeds may play a part in this. Azerbaijan makes it quick, with visits lasting a mere 6:26 on average, as does Belarus and the Ukraine, where they keep their sessions under the 7 minute mark. In terms of which countries showed significant changes in their visit duration lengths from 2013 to 2014, South Koreans extended their stays by an impressive 140 seconds compared to last year’s numbers, as they did in Turkey and Thailand, with 64 and 30 second average visit extensions each.

LASTING POWER IN AMERICA

When we examine how long Americans last on a state by state level, it’s immediately clear that Mississippi works hard and plays hard. According to the most recent American Time Use Survey (ATUS) compiled by the American Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mississippi boasts some of the highest averages for both daily sleep hours and time spent working in a day. Incidentally, they also hold the current American record for longest average visit time on Pornhub, with an impressive 10 minutes and 47 seconds. They’re hanging loose in Hawaii with a respectable 10:36 average visit length, alongside Arkansas at 10:11. Overall, these lengthier visits occur within the southeastern states, with the exception of Hawaii.

Now for a look at which states stick around a little less longer to git er’ done. Topping that list is Utah, with the shortest average visit length in the country at 8:54, which may be explained by the fact that they tend to spend a little more time grooming and praying than they do elsewhere in America, again according to the ATUS. What accounts for the relatively low 8:59 average visit length in Nebraska? Might be the fact that they land on the higher end of the spectrum in terms of how long they spend on housework in a week.

A QUESTION OF GENDER AND SEX

Our gender demographics collaborative with Buzzfeed was one of our favorite and arguably most interesting posts of the year. In What Women Want we took a look at how the porn viewing habits of men and women differ, according to our anonymized data, segmented by gender.

We’ve since collected some new, specified data which breaks down the Pornhub viewership proportions by gender in our top 20 countries. Topping off this list is Brazil, which has an impressive 29% female viewership base, a solid 6% above the 23% world average. Of particular note are the Philippines and Finland, both of which are home to populations featuring over a quarter of female Pornhub viewers. This is interestingly juxtaposed to the most recent Global Gender Gap Report compiled by the World Economic Forum, which reports Finland in 2nd place and the Philippines in 5th of all countries in the world as having most successfully closed the gender gaps. It looks like these countries are getting closer to sealing the same gap here too as far as porn is concerned!

When we looked at the terms that women are more likely to search for than men, the results were simply Sapphic. For instance, ‘eating pussy’ is over 900% more likely to be searched by a woman than a man, as are terms like ‘pussy licking,’ ‘tribbing,’ ‘lesbian scissoring’ and ‘ebony lesbians’ which on average are over 600% more likely to be searched for by ladies. We also learned that women were more likely to search for reality-TV stars who also moonlight as adult industry stars, such as Kim Kardashian, who is the most searched for porn star by women in the world, followed closely by Mimi Faust (nsfw) and Farrah Abraham (nsfw) who both show up in the top 5. As we also reported, women are much more into same sex and group-themed porn, as made apparent in their preferring the Lesbian, Gay (Male), Thrreesome and Gangbang categories more so than their male counterparts.

VICES AND DEVICES

2014 was the year that the globe decided to take their porn to go. In April of 2014, Pornhub announced that the 5 video viewing limit on mobile was to be permanently lifted, much to the world’s delight. Overall, 2014 saw a 12% increase in mobile usage on Pornhub from 2013. Let’s take a look at which of our 20 countries contributed to this gain most significantly.

Among our top 20, the largest increases in traffic shares for mobile devices took place in Mexico and the Netherlands, with 20% and 14% increases. The world was down a significant 13% in desktop use when surfing Pornhub, most significantly again in Mexico and the Netherlands at 23% and 15% respectively, with special mentions going out to the Philippines and Spain, 15% and 14% decreases in desktop use mark the move to enjoying porn on mobile-type devices more and more. Japan and Italy are keeping it traditional, showing the least amount of change in the platforms that they are using to peruse Pornhub.

There are also some interesting figures to note that fall outside of our top 20 for the switches they’re making in their device selections. For instance, tablet use is up 138% in Malaysia and 128% in Colombia, while smartphone traffic share is up a notable 635% in Turkey and 142% in Estonia.

OPERATING SYSTEM OVERHAUL

Windows remains the most popular operating system among Pornhub users in 2014, accounting for an impressive 83% overall on desktop. However, this is still 3% down from last year, meaning that some Pornhub users are making the switch over to OS’s like Macintosh (up .8% and accounting for 11.5% of overall desktop users) and Linux (up .9% and accounting for 2.3% of overall desktop users). We touched on these figures in our Gizmodo collaborative back in September 2014, Porn’s Operating System Battle as well as the specific searches and visit durations particular to users on each type of operating system. Another look at this data reminds us that Windows users have a definite mama fetish, as made evident by MILF porn star Lisa Ann leading as the most searched for on this particular OS, followed by search term ‘mom’. They are, however, quite a bit quicker than MacOS users at getting the job done as Windows users spend a mere 8 minutes and 39 seconds with 7.41 pages viewed per visit on average, whereas MacOS users are taking their time with visits generally lasting in the 9 minute and 31 second camp, with 8.85 pages viewed.

On the mobile side of things, Android users rule, accounting for 49.9% of users, representing a 10.9% traffic share increase. Windows Phone use is the only other traffic share gainer in 2014,  up  52.3% from last year, with iOS and Blackberry  mobile operating systems down 4.8% and 47.6% respectively. Apple’s iOS still represents a significant 40.2% of overall Pornhub mobile viewers, and they too have some rather interesting search action going on. For instance, they are more into ‘lesbian’ type porn than their Android counterparts, but are a little less turned on by ‘cartoon’ type porn, which is more popular among Andorid users.

BATTLE OF THE BROWSERS

We teamed up with Gizmodo again back in May to breakdown browser use and affiliated user behavior in our Pornhub Battle of the Browser’s post. We’re back with the most up to date browser-related data, so let’s take a look! Among desktop users, Chrome takes the cake with a remarkable 49.5% of the traffic share, up 10% from last year, with Internet Explorer still holding it down in 2nd place with 21.1%. Though IE took an 8.7% hit over the course of the year, a mere 15% of desktop users overall make use of IE for their day to day browsing, according to the most recent figures from the W3 Counter. This discrepancy might hint to the fact that a good number of people use this less popular browser for porn viewing only, diminishing the risk of another user on the computer seeing this type of activity in a more widely used browser like Chrome or Firefox.

Over on to mobile browsers now. Safari takes the lion’s share here, accounting for 38.5% of total users, though this is down 3.1% from last year. The biggest gainer is Chrome, which increased its traffic shares by 165.8% and now accounts for 23.5% of browser users on mobile devices. Though Internet Explorer users only account for 3% of mobile users, they sure have some impressive lasting power, with an average of almost 9 minutes in average visit duration length and 10.1 pages viewed per session, both the longest among any of the other browsers.

Last but not least we’re getting gamers covered in regards to the consoles they use to lvl up on Pornhub. Playstation and Xbox are the undeniable heavy hitters here, claiming 40% and 45.7% of traffic respectively – though Playstation’s traffic shares are down 36.8% from last year. Nintendo Wii, on the other hand, saw a 69.9% traffic share increase over the course of the year and now accounts for a respectable 8.2% of all console user traffic. Insert your favorite joke about Wii remotes and spastic hand-jerking motions here.

PORN INTERRUPTED

The holidays are a time of year that many take a break from day to day life to celebrate and spend some quality time with loved ones. As such, a little less quality time is being spent on Pornhub during the holiday season, as we can see by the chart below. On Christmas Day, traffic worldwide drops on average by 18% but slows considerably more in the UK and Australia where traffic is down 30% and 28%. Over in Russia, traffic actually increases by a notable 13% on the 25th which may be explained by the fact that Russians traditionally celebrate the Christmas season over a few days, the first of which is the 31st of December where a significant 53% drop in traffic occurs. Though internationally on New Years Eve traffic dropped by an average of 44%, Europe goes extra hard with the biggest drops in traffic occurring within the continent, especially in Sweden and the Netherlands with 71% and 66% drops.

Back in the USA, Christmas Eve is the holiday showing the most significant decrease in traffic with a 38% dip. A solid 20% recovery is made on Christmas Day, where traffic is only down 19% but dips back down to 37% below average when Americans rang in the New Year on the 31st. On the 4th of July, folks were a little busier setting off fireworks in the sky, rather than in the more figurative way as noted by a 11% drop.

Now for a look at how some of the more prominent cultural, political and sporting events shaped Pornhub traffic this year. The most significant drops here are World Cup related, specifically in Argentina and Germany where drops in the 40% range were recorded during the final match. At the height of the Hong Kong Protests on the 29th of September, a day after which action set off in the Causeway Bay and Mong Kok regions, Pornhub took a 23% traffic hit in the name of political justice. Over in the US, some major television events also interrupted your regularly scheduled Pornhub programming, notably the Oscars on March 2nd as well as the Game of Thrones season finale on June 15, both some of the highest rated TV events of the year.

Rounding out this segment is the Pornhub sports report. Overall, Superbowl XLVIII which took place on February 2nd of 2014 was the international sporting event that affected Pornhub traffic the most, with a 13% overall dip in traffic. The World Cup Final Match between Germany and Argentina follows close behind, with a 12% drop in visits to the best site in the world. It seems that Pornhub users across the world were the least distracted by women’s tennis and a fancy parade with mere 3% dips recorded on the days of the Wimbledon Women’s Final and the Olympics Closing Ceremony.

In the US, the Superbowl once again takes the cake as demonstrated with a 22% decrease in regular traffic despite a lopsided Seattle Victory, which is exactly double that of the 11% dips recorded on the US Open Men’s Final on August 8th and the Indianapolis 500 on May 5th. They say that baseball is the all American sport but Pornhub stats beg to differ as US traffic was only down 3% on average the day of the World Series Game 7 on October 29th.

THAT’S A WRAP!

Thanks for tuning in! 2014 gave us the chance to bring a little porn to some of the most prominent world, cultural, sporting and political events and we’re all very excited to see what 2015 has in store. As always, keep it locked to Pornhub Insights for the latest and greatest porn stats and have a very happy new year!

THIS JUST IN: UPDATES!

Just when you thought that we had gone and blown our entire porn stats load, the Pornhub statisticians have got a few fresh and quick facts on some of our favorite Pornhub viewing countries.

First up we’ve got Jamaica, where they chill on Pornhub for a luxurious 12 minutes and 47 seconds on average. That’s almost a whole 4 minutes more than the rest of the world! They’re also not particularly affected by the holiday season, in terms of letting Christmas or New Year’s Eve interfere with their Pornhub time, showing only 15% and 20% traffic drops on these days.

Over to Norway now where their device proportions are something to keep an eye on. With only 35% of their traffic shares allocated to mobile compared to the worldwide 45% they do fall a little short, but they make up for it in tablet use which stands strong at 17%. On Christmas Day they’re opening up presents then Pornhub on their browsers seemingly right after as traffic is only down 7% on baby Jesus’ b-day but dips down a staggering 71% on New Years Eve. Party on!

They keep it pretty quick on Pornhub in Serbia with the average visit lasting only 7 minutes and 17 seconds. According to their top searches, they’re also very specifically interested in themselves and moms as all of the top terms are oriented around MILFs and Serbians. To each their own!

We tip our hats to you, ladies of South Africa, for accounting for a knockout 32% of the Pornhub viewership in your gorgeous country. South Africans are also all about that portable porn, with 71% of their traffic shares originating from mobile devices. Another fun fact? ‘South African’ now tops the list for most popular search term in the land, after an impressive 29 spot climb. Last year’s ‘Indian’ has been knocked down 3 spots.

We’ll finish off with Finalnd where they too are still peeping Pornhub on their PCs for the most part as a considerable 53% of traffic shares are desktops. Perpetual fan favorite Lisa Ann tops the charts as the most searched for porn star in the land, whom undoubtedly many Finns are searching for during their solid 8 minute and 39 average sessions.