We’ve had to wait for it, but Pornhub has finally released its 2017 Year in Review report. And no, it’s not all smut. In fact, the lengthy work provides notable insight into how the globe’s search interests (albeit in pornographic material) fluctuates throughout the year, and differs to the previous year.
And among the 28.5-billion visits, 24.7-billion searches and 3.7-petabytes of data transferred in 2017, South Africa featured strongly.
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In fact, the country was among the top 20 countries responsible for providing some 80% of Pornhub’s traffic. It was the only African nation to feature on the list too, swapping places with previous 19th placed nation Belgium in the process.
Russia in 18th, Argentina in 17th and 16th placed Sweden also just beat South Africa.
But with that said, the United States remains the thirstiest nation on earth “by a long shot”, with the United Kingdom, India, Japan and Canada rounding out the top five.
Africa did however feature in another set of statistics though. The two north African countries of Ethiopia (up 68 places over 2016) and Libya (up 22 spots) were highlighted for seeing the biggest bump in traffic to Pornhub over 2016.
As for visit duration, South Africans may be a bit more durable than those elsewhere on Earth.
“South Africa, is taking several moments to themselves at an average of 11 minutes and 02 seconds being spent on the site per visit, coming in second place,” the site quips, with the Philippines topping this particular graph.
Both countries beat the United States (10 minutes, 33 seconds) and Canada (10 minutes, 10 seconds) on the clock.
“Other countries that are putting in more time on Pornhub than last year, include South Korea (up by 228 seconds) the Ukraine (up by 126 seconds) and Colombia (up by 199 seconds),” it added.
A more acute look at South Africa’s browsing habits also highlighted a few notable demographic outliers.
For one, Kim Kardashian remained the most popular pornstar on the site, beating the likes of Mia Khalifa and Blac Chyna. Kim Kardashian, when looking at global searches, only featured in fourth place with 100.2-million total video views in the previous year.
“Black south african” was also noted as South Africa’s top search term once again.
As for the proportion of men and women visiting Pornhub, SA is among the world’s leading nations once again.
It saw a 33% increase in female visitors to the site in 2017, with 68% of the country’s visits to Pornhub stemming from men, and 32% from women. It ranked third for countries hosting the highest percentage of women visiting the site.
South Africa spent on average more time than the US, Canada and the UK on Pornhub in 2017
“Staying consistent to last year’s reports, the average proportion of female visitors to Pornhub worldwide remains at 26%!” the site revealed.
Other countries saw a marked increase too. India’s traffic from women spiked by 129% when compared to 2016, while Japanese women also increasingly added the site to their bookmarks, with Pornhub noting a 56% increase over the previous year.
Overall, the southern hemisphere had a larger balance of women visiting the site when compared to men.
What about age?
Worldwide, the majority of Pornhub users are between the ages of 25 and 34, but this is slightly different in South Africa.
Those in the younger 18 to 24 (37%) category are the most active group of the site, with the 25-34 age range (31%) the next largest. Interestingly, 9% of South African users are 55 years old or older.
All in all, the mean age of the South African visitor was 33 in 2017.
There’s a correlation between the device used to browse the site and the age of users, with younger South Africans adopting mobile technologies more readily.
Traffic from mobile devices were up by 7%, with 79% of visitors from South Africa now using their mobiles as opposed to 73% in 2016. Just 8% accessed the site on a tablet, while 13% used their desktops.
Among the top 20 Pornhub-visiting nations, only India (86%) had a higher percentage of mobile users than South Africa in the top 20.
And opposing the mobile transformation, only Germany and Russia visited the site more often on tablets and desktops than on mobile phones.
Traffic to Pornhub dipped by 49% in South Africa on New Year’s Eve between 6pm and midnight. The likes of Sweden (58%), Belgium (57%) and Russia (54%) were the only other nations to see a sharper local dip in traffic to the site.
Similarly, traffic from South Africa to Pornhub on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day also fell by 12% and 18% respectively. This is compared to a 29% average worldwide dip on Christmas Eve.
“Australia (-27%) and The United Kingdom (-27%) tie for having the highest decline on Christmas day, which tells us they didn’t get what they asked for this year,” snarks Pornhub.
But what of South African specific holidays?
Heritage Day (Braai Day) and Holy Saturday (the day prior to Easter Sunday) saw notable dips in traffic of 13% and 15% respectively.
All graphs: Pornhub Insights
