BURBANK, Calif. — Pornhub researchers recently teamed up with fashion platform SSense.com to take a look at “sneaker fetish” searches.
Pornhub placed a focus on sneakers because nearly half of its site's top brand-name searches are best known for footwear, including Converse, Nike, Adidas and Vans.
“Pornhub’s statisticians found that proportionately, male visitors are 55 percent more likely to search for sneaker porn compared to women,” Pornhub researchers said.
“Visitors to Pornhub gay pages are 1,124 percent more likely to search for sneakers compared to nongay visitors.
When compared to all other age groups, visitors between the ages of 35 to 44 are the most likely search for sneakers, by a margin of plus-18 percent, they said. Visitors above the age of 55 are far less likely to search for sneakers compared to those under 55.
The No. 1 sneaker related search is “sneaker worship,” followed by “converse sneakers” and “sneaker sex,” reseachers said.
“Treading further down the list, we find that ‘sneaker trample’ is popular, along with searches like ‘sneaker lick,’ ‘smell sneakers’ and ‘sneaker ballbusting,’” they said. “Perhaps it’s no surprise that ‘polish sneakers’ ranks high since our statisticians found that Warsaw, Poland was the city most likely to search for sneakers.
“It’s followed by Berlin, Milan, Prague and Paris. Twenty of the top 30 sneaker searching cities are located in Europe. Sao Paulo, Brazil ranks 11th, Montreal, Canada is 16th and Adelaide, Australia is 24th.”
The Northeast appears to be the center of sneaker searches across the United States, researchers said. Although Columbus, Ohio ranks highest among cities, the state of Massachusetts is proportionately the most likely to search for sneakers, followed by Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Sneaker searches are least popular in Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming.
Ssense’s article on sneaker fetish searches, “Triple S to XXX: The Data of Desire,” can be found here.