United States vs Russia

There’s no doubt that political tensions have risen between the United States and Russia lately. So our friends at Vice asked the Pornhub Statisticians to crunch some numbers and see what both super-powers are doing to relieve their tensions. Seems like a little spy work is required. Mission accepted.

Nation Duration

On average, visitors from the United States spend just under 10 minutes and look at 9 pages each time they visit Pornhub. Russia falls short of these numbers, with only 7.2 pages viewed in less than 8 minutes.

If we look at traffic from the capital cities, Moscow still spends less time and looks at fewer pages than Washington. However, the capitals differ when compared to their respective countries. Moscow spends 45 more seconds on Pornhub than their national average, whereas Washington spends several seconds less than rest of the United States.

Daily Differences

When we think of Russian traffic it usually involves dash-cam videos, but our statisticians did find some interesting contrasts when looking at the daily traffic to Pornhub from the two countries.

Americans like to start off their week by visiting Pornhub the most on Mondays, whereas Russians prefer to end their week by watching porn. The days with the lowest traffic also differ, but Russia’s is earlier in the week (Tuesday) and the United States is later (Thursday).

If we compare those days to the rest of the world, the United States shares Monday’s popularity with the international community, but neither country matches the world’s low-point for porn consumption which is Sunday.

Sex Spy vs Spy

The most telling differences between the United States and Russia are perhaps in what type of porn each country likes to search for.

We started by looking at how likely each country is to spy on the other. Turns out, 0.16% of searches in the United States are for “Russian”, and 0.06% of searches in Russia are for “American”. That means that that Americans are 2.7x more likely to be watching the Russians than vice versa.

Pleasure Preferences

We’ve looked at the top search terms in the United States before, most recently when the folks at Digg asked us what were the Top Search Terms in US Cities. The cities showed some interesting variations, but the United States in general likes “massage”, “milf”, “lesbian”, “teen” and “college” the most.

By far the most popular search in Russia is for “Russian”, which is a trend we’ve seen in many countries worldwide. For example, in Germany the number one search term is “German”, and in Finland it’s “Finnish”.

Out of the Top 25 search terms, only 9 are shared between the United States and Russia. This includes the top 5 terms (after “russian”) which are “casting”, “mom”, “anal”, “teen” and “massage”. Searches for “Czech” make a pretty solid showing on Russia’s list as well.

In most countries, the top searches are for individual terms, like we see on the United States list. Russia however goes even further into their love of home grown porn. A further 10 searches on their top 25 list are combined with the word “russian” – such as “russian orgy” and “russian teen”. Combine those results with the individual “russian” searches, and that makes Russia the most patriotic porn populace we’ve ever studied!

Contrasting Capitals

Below we can see what the powers-that-be in the super-power capitals are most likely to search for. “Ebony” is the most popular term in Washington, D.C., which is something we discovered when looking at numerous US cities. It’s most likely due to the capital’s population being over 50% African American, and why “black” also appears on their top 10 list.

There are only 4 search terms in the top 10 that both capitals enjoy – “massage” and “casting” plus pornstars “lisa ann” and “madison ivy”.

Polar Opposite Porn

The following table shows us quite literally the biggest contrasts in porn tastes between the United States and Russia. Ranked from 1 to 20, these are the terms that are proportionally the most likely to be searched in one country over the other. So for example, reality tv and sextape star “Farrah Abraham” has the largest relative difference between her popularity in the United States and lack of popularity in Russia.

Who’s watching who?

A country’s taste in Pornstars can also be very telling. Some pornstars are popular around the world like “Lisa Ann”, “Madison Ivy”, “Asa Akira” and “Tori Black” who all make the top 10 pornstar lists in both the US and Russia. The remaining pornstars all differ between the two nations.

The United States shows it’s love for celebrities with sex tape stars “Farrah Abraham” and “Kim Kardashian” making their list.

Attention-seeking celebs are no less popular in Russia, with “Sasha Grey” taking their number 1 spot. Although retired from porn, Sasha made headlines in 2013 when she spent some time touring Russia to promote her industrial-music career. She attempted to mimic Russian President Putin’s 2010 tour by driving a Lada Kalina sedan cross country (which promptly broke down after the third day). None-the-less, she achieved a good deal of publicity for her attempt, which certainly helped her reach the number 1 among Russians.

Rivals in the Rink

Thirty-four years had passed since the famed 1980 “Miracle on Ice” game in which the United States upset the heavily favored Russians. At the time, the two countries were still deeply frozen in their cold-war antics. But on February 25th, 2014 they faced each other again as allies, but still long-time rivals, at the Sochi Winter Olympics. In the end, the US was able to overturn Russia with a score of 3-2.

Our Pornhub statisticians wanted to see how traffic to Pornhub was affected during the game, which would be closely watched in both countries.

The puck dropped at 7:30am Eastern Standard time, and we can see that the traffic started to go down shortly before the televised event started. The early time most likely effect the results from the US, but our chart takes into consideration the time-of-day, and day-of-week averages.

The traffic changes were much more dramatic in Russia where it was down more than 10% in the 2nd period. By the 3rd period, traffic had started to return to normal in both countries. But immediately after the game, Russian visits to Pornhub increased dramatically over time-of-day averages. What better way to ease the pain of defeat than by watching some porn?

We’ve seen the same results happen in other sporting events. For example, during the 2014 Superbowl between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks, traffic was down in both Colorado and Washington State, but after Seattle’s victory, more Denver fans returned to Pornhub to make themselves feel better.

We hope you enjoyed our little spy session on the super-powers. Stay tuned for more future Insights into Pornhub!