Actual intercourse beats virtual intercourse

It seems people spend more time making money than making love online, these days.

Business trumps porn online

In their mid-1990s heyday, sex-related topics accounted for 17 per cent of web searches, but that figure has shrunk to an unsexy 3.8 per cent, Queensland University of Technology's Professor Amanda Spinks said.

But Prof Spinks said business and commerce-related topics, including buying and selling on the net, had outstripped sex to make 30 per cent of web searches.

Her research in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University analysed up to 30 million search sessions from search engines including Alta Vista, AlltheWeb.com, Ask.com, Excite and Dogpile.

After business and e-commerce came people, travel, places, computers and the internet, health, education, then entertainment, the study found.

Prof Spinks said there were multiple reasons behind the fall of sex-related topics from the top spot.

You need to read the article to find out the various reasons she postulates. But I reckon the real reason is not one that she postulates: if you're busy making money hand over fist, you need two hands. Neither does she touch on the fact that you can get fired or sued for using business time and resources to search for sex, but not if you are "busy" surfing the business blogs.