DESPITE the old truism, pornography is not the most popular thing on the internet, according to Google's new search analysis tool.More Australians use the web to find games than adult content, even in Queensland where searches for "porn" and "sex" are the most popular.
Comparisons of search terms over time and broken down by region have been made available on Google's latest data tool Insights, allowing users and advertisers to see which subjects are in demand and where.
For example, web searches including the terms "art" and "politics" are popular in the Northern Territory and Tasmania – but only "politics" is of interest in the ACT, where searches for "art" trail every other region.
The Veronicas saw a spike in interest this month after nude photos allegedly showing Jess Origliasso surfaced on an adult website, but overall searches for the band have been in decline since 2006.
Again, web searches for "veronicas" and "nude" were most popular in Queensland.
Google searches for "news" are most popular in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, while those for "shoes" usually come from Victoria and "the beatles" from South Australia.
The top Australian search terms so far this year are: "games", "youtube", "myspace", "ebay", "google", "facebook", "weather", "hotmail", "yahoo" and "real estate".
Insights data can also be grouped by area of interest, such as travel or sports, and compared across countries.
According to Google, the Great Barrier Reef is the most searched-for holiday spot in Australia by users in the US, UK and Japan, taking out the top three search terms. It is followed by "ayers rock", "cairns", "tasmania" and "blue mountains".
Insights data is available for the years 2004 to 2008 and is updated daily. A Google Australia spokesperson said the company had not censored adult-themed keywords from the results.
A report from traffic monitoring service HitWise this week revealed almost 9 out of 10 Australians use Google to search the web. The search giant accounted for 88.14 per cent of searches, with MSN and Yahoo! sharing 10 per cent, it said.
Interesting things you probably didn't need to know
Slightly more people in Western Australia search for "icecream" as one word than anywhere else in the country.
Searches for The Ramones are concentrated in South America, and those for The Sex Pistols in eastern Europe.
Searches for "porn" are most popular in Queensland and New South Wales and least popular in Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
The only three regions where "news" is a more popular search term than "porn" are the ACT, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
Australians and Britons have difficulty spelling the title of the Kama Sutra properly, while people in the US seem to be on top of it.
Victoria appears to be the state most interested in film, dominating the searches for "cinema", "cinemas" and "movie".
New South Wales is the only state where more people search for Germaine Greer than Andrew Bolt.
There weren't enough searches on this reporter's name to come up with any funny statistics.
Facebook is currently searched for more often in the ACT and NT, while MySpace dominates everywhere else.
Searches for "scrabulous" are microscopic in comparison to those for "scrabble", in Australia and everywhere else.
There are more searches for Call Of Duty 4 than Halo 3 in Australia and the UK, most likely because it is a far superior game.
More people search for Ed Kuepper than Chris Bailey in Australia, and more people for Chris Bailey in the UK (they're the songwriters from The Saints who had a falling out – see here).
Australia is leading the world for searches on "purple monkey dishwasher". I'm not making this stuff up.
The Family Guy is searched for more often the The Simpsons in the US, and the other way around in Australia.
"Lyrics" was the most searched-for term in Australia in 2004, 2005 and 2006 before mysteriously dropping out of the top ten altogether.
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