Ukraine bursts into top 20 viewers of Pornhub in 2018

Ukraine can’t claim to lead in many global rankings, but it has strong-armed its way into one more: the country is now among the top 20 by daily traffic on Pornhub, the world’s largest pornography site.

Between 2017 and 2018, Ukraine jumped 11 spots in the ranking to penetrate the top 20 and take 16th place, Pornhub reported in its sixth annual Year in Review report.

Pornhub credited Ukraine’s rise to changes in how users access the site. However, that growth could also stem from the fact that, in May 2017, Ukraine banned and blocked VKontakte, a Russian social network that included much pornographic content.

“As the Ukraine (sic) entered Pornhub’s top 20 countries for the first time, it’s easy to see where a lot of that growth came from with a 40 percent increase in smartphone traffic share during the same year,” the site wrote.

Smartphone traffic grew in all top 20 countries in 2018. However, Ukraine showed the highest “phone growth” of all 20. According to the report, 60 percent of Ukrainian visitors accessed Pornhub on their mobile phones, while 34 percent used desktop computers, and 6 percent used tablets.

Additionally, Pornhub concluded that “much of (Ukraine’s) traffic growth came from entirely new visitors, as evidenced by the number of changes in their top searches over the last year.”

In particular, the search term “anime,” referring to a style of Japanese animation, shot up 40 spots — 367-percent growth — to become the country’s top search. The more traditional “sex” moved up 380 spots to become the second most popular search term. “BDSM” — an acronym for bondage and discipline, domination, sadism and masochism — and “orgasm” took third and fourth place, rising five and four spots, respectively.

However, 2018 was hardly an impressive year for the Ukrainian national consciousness among pornography viewers. Russia continued to maintain its death grip on Ukrainian Pornhub users. Although the fifth most popular search term, “Russian,” fell by five spots, “Russian MILF” — referring to a mother with whom one would like to engage in sexual intercourse — gained 56 spots to become the 9th most popular search term. That 256-percent growth allowed the term to enter the country’s top 10 in 2018.

According to Pornhub, Ukraine’s top performer in 2018 was American adult film actress Sasha Grey. In 2015, Grey made an unusual cameo in Russia’s war against Ukraine when a pro-Kremlin account on VKontakte posted her photograph and claimed it was the image of nurse Sasha Serova (roughly Sasha Grey in Russian). Serova was supposedly captured by Ukrainian forces, raped, and decapitated with an axe.

The “fake news” later turned out to be a prank by Russian internet users.

In response, Grey wrote on Twitter: “I <3 my Russian fans, but this propaganda takes it too far. News that I was a NURSE killed in the Russia/Ukraine conflict.”

According to Pornhub, the top 20 countries provide 80 percent of the site’s daily traffic. In 2018, the United States continued to lead the world in Pornhub traffic, followed by the United Kingdom, India, Japan, and Canada. Russia and South Africa took 19th and 20th place, respectively.

Despite its popularity around the world, Pornhub has also proven controversial. In December 2017, feminist demonstrators gathered to protest the opening of a Pornhub pop-up shop in New York City. The protesters accused the site of promoting the objectification of women, abuse, human trafficking, and sexual violence. Pornhub has also faced accusations pirating the content created by pornographic filmmakers and actors.