As the Internet-using audience continues to expand, searches for porn have shrunk as a proportion of overall search traffic. In fact, traffic to social networking sites has eclipsed porn surfing. Those are just some of the findings that the general manager of research at Hitwise, Bill Tancer, revealed in his new book, Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters. But that's not all he found—overall, our searches reflect what's going on in our lives throughout the year and can be an indicator of what the Next Big Thing™ will be in the future.

Searches for porn have dropped to a mere 10 percent of all queries, compared to 20 percent ten years ago, Tancer says. "As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased," he told Reuters in an interview Tuesday. Apparently, 18- to 24-year-olds already know where to find all of their favorite porn online (and it probably rhymes with Mit Borrent), because Tancer found that they were particularly disinterested in searching for porn. "My theory is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don't have time to look at adult sites," he said.

Tancer's other findings largely revolve around the shifting search patterns that occur as people's moods and concerns change throughout the year. Some of it is obvious—for example, people searched for tropical storms much more after Hurricane Katrina than they did previously, and they tend to do so more often when a new storm is brewing. And, of course, people tend to search for the same general themes at the same times every year, like prom dresses in the winter/spring, diet searches after the beginning of the year, and—this is completely serious—searches for antidepressants around Thanksgiving time here in the US.

The same applies to election season in the US (with a not-so-slight superficial twist): Internet-users have been searching fervently for images of Sarah Palin or details on Barack Obama's height significantly more often than either of their policies. "You have to get far down in the search terms to link the search for a candidate with any issue," Tancer told Reuters. (On this particular issue, Tancer also wrote a piece in Time a couple weeks ago regarding searches for Sarah Palin's "hot/bikini/naked" photos.) Let us all take a moment to weep for America.



According to Google Trends, interest in hurricanes historically outpaced Sarah Palin until recently According to Google Trends, interest in hurricanes historically outpaced Sarah Palin until recently

All of this is interesting enough, but the true value of this data is to look at how well it predicts what the next hot gadget will be or the newest technology that seems likely to hit critical mass. Tancer told Media Life Magazine that early adopters don't always end up predicting the next big thing themselves, but their search habits—combined with early mainstream searches—can be an active indicator of what's next. He also feels that marketers should use search data to learn about how their products are perceived and whether the public already considers them old 'n busted or still fresh.