MOSCOW, February 21 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s leading Internet search engine offered a rare profile Friday of users’ online search patterns, including illegal video piracy.
Two-thirds of users seeking websites related to television programs were under the age of 25, although that group represents less than a third of total users, Yandex said on its website.
The company found that women were 50 percent more likely to search for TV series than men.
Only 6 percent of user queries for TV shows included key words signaling a desire to illegally download files, such as “torrent,” a reference to the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol.
However, the company noted that 90 percent of searches for TV series indicated a desire to watch the shows online. Such queries often produce hits with links to illegal streaming or file-sharing websites.
Searches for TV shows represented 2 to 3 percent of all queries, less than those for video games (4 to 5 percent), but more than leisure activities outside the home (1 to 2 percent).
The company also found that users who sought shows tended to have similar tastes even across genres.
Users searching for the British sci-fi program “Misfits” were more likely to search for the supernatural series “American Horror Story.” Likewise, viewers of the romance-focused “Sex and the City” tended to be fans of medical drama “House.”
Russians searched for domestic TV shows slightly more often than they looked for foreign ones. Of the searches for foreign shows, almost half were for American shows, followed by Turkish at a quarter.
The analysis was based on data collected last year between October 1 and November 17, according to the company.
