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More than one-third of the Internet contains adult content


Cyberporn: How pervasive is it?
Online Porn: How pervasive is it?

TIME magazine once asked about how pervasive online porn was?

Other than “a lot”, it seems that we now have a more definitive answer to the question.  According to a study by an online security firm, OVER ONE-THIRD OF THE INTERNET IS DEVOTED TO PORN.

The study found that 37% of the total number of web pages out there were devoted to pornography.  It’s possible that the sample size used to come up with this figure skewed the results – the study only looked at around 4,000,000 pages and we’re fairly confident that the Internet comprises many, many more pages than that.

Still, the survey did a similar study in 2009 – and when comparing the numbers between 1Q2010-2Q2010 vs 1Q2009-2Q2009, they saw that the number of “illegal content”-oriented sites increased 17% in 1Q2010 versus what was seen in 2009.  So even if the small sample size skews data one way or the other, if there is consistency in the sampling then we can conclude that online porn is growing year over year.

For a comparison, online game related websites (such as World of Warcraft) grew more than 212% in 1Q2010.  In the same time period, websites that contain violence grew 10.8%, terrorism 8.5%, and illegal drugs 6.8%.  If it matters, online shopping sites increased 9%, travel and tourism increased 5.7%, and computer science and sports increased 4.2%.