Polygon contacted the Insights team to see if the media attention around the game Fortnite has had any effect on Pornhub searches. Our statisticians found that while Fortnite had a slow start on Pornhub, it has steadily gained ground over the last several months to become of of our top video game related search terms.
After Fortnite launched in July of 2017, it only resulted in a handful of searches. Things really picked up at the end of September 2017 when Fortnite’s Battle Royale came out, and they have grown steadily since then. Spikes in search volume seem to coincide with major game updates and news cycles such as the 1.36 patch in January and when 60 FPS was enabled in February.
Fortnite’s biggest search increase occurred on March 15 after Drake played the game live on Twitch. Not only did it break records for concurrent Twitch views, it caused searches on Pornhub to increase 824% above average.
The most popular Fortnite related searches include “hentai”, “battle royale”, “animation” and “strip”. Following some viral videos on YouTube, “try not to nut fornite” also became a popular search. “SFM” is a term often combined with game searches (see Overwatch Insights).
By looking at what users typically search before or after searching Fortnite, we can start to see a game related trend develop. The most common search during the same user session is “Overwatch“, followed by “Team Fortress 2” and “video game”. Other games being searched “Minecraft“, “Pokemon”, “Rainbox Six Seige” and Fortnite’s rival platform, “PUBG” (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds).
Out statisticians found that male visitors are 136% more likely to search for Fortnite compared to women. Visitors between the ages of 18 to 24 are 361% more likely to search compared to all other age groups. As Fortnite gameplay has moved into mobile platforms, it’s visitors on Apple iOS based devices that are 77% more likely to search Fortnite compared to Android users.
Across the United States, visitors from Kansas are proportionately the most likely to search for Fortnite, followed by those from South Dakota, Rhode Island, Connecticut and California. Based on its proportion of all searches, Fortnite is least popular in D.C., Mississippi, Hawaii, Vermont and North and South Carolina.
Worldwide, visitors from Finland are proportionately the most likely to be searching for Fortnite, followed by visitors from France, Ireland, Norway and Denmark. In North America, the United States ranks 6th, Canada is 12th and Mexico is 19th worldwide.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of Pornhub Insights. Let us know what other games you’d like to see featured on Insights in the comments below!