In August of 2006, AOL accidentally posted a database with millions of searches made by their subscribers. They soon pulled it down, but not before it escaped and multiplied on hard drives across the world. Oops. This is probably the best source for getting a look into the online sex-life of the American public. So that's what I'll do here. I am running the data through a set of programs to sort it and do statistics (easy), and then manually categorize it for further analysis (very tedious).

My first article is about self-identified fetishers.

It isn't clear that the millions of searches that AOL released were truly random or representative of their customers, but I think it's likely. A bigger question is whether AOL customers represent the public as a whole. I've read that AOL subscribers tend to be less tech-savy than other net users, although that distinction is not as sharp as it was, according to my sources.

Other data on what people are searching for online is held close to the chest - for good reason. Although AOL tried to make the information anonymous, a few people were identified because the searches they made included places, organizations, and other details that pointed to them. Because of privacy concerns, AOL won't do this again, and neither will the other search engines.

More to come.