The naked truth of nude queries 

“Nude” = traffic

If you have a closer look at the search queries bringing traffic to some of the most popular mainstream websites on the internet, you may be surprised (or not) to see how many people land on these sites via nude- & naked-related requests.

Let’s have a look for instance at nude queries generating traffic on Cosmopolitan.com (source: ahrefs)

Cosmopolitan is ranking in the USA for 26,367 queries containing the word “nude” (and 19,708 queries containing the word “naked”).

Let’s run the same test for Marieclaire.com and Refinery29.com

Not only do these websites benefit from nude-related queries but they also rank pretty well for these requests. Refinery29 is for instance #1 on Google USA for “Vanessa Hudgens Nude”, Marie Claire ranks #2 for “Kim Kardashian Nude” (and ranks between 1 and 5 for other naked queries related to the Kardashians).

Obviously the traffic captured by mainstream properties is just the tip of the nudity iceberg. Some naughty dudes have created websites solely dedicated to celebs nudity, some of them bearing pretty sick names.

See for instance the website which ranks #1 on Google.com for “nude celebs”… Unfortunately this isn’t a joke. 

According to Similarweb, this tasteless website generates 26.86M visits per month (ranked #1530 worldwide). ahrefs tells us that Celebjihad ranks for 194,583 keywords, #1 for a long series of {celebrity} nude queries, e.g. brie larson nude, aubrey plaza nude, alexandra daddario nude, emily ratajkowski nude, etc. They present themselves as a “satirical website” where information “may or may not be true and is not meant to be taken as fact.”

Celebs, not porn stars

Quite logically, naughty “nude celebs” queries are focused on mainstream celebrities, not porn stars (even if some porn stars tend to become mainstream celebrities). For the obvious reason that mainstream celebrities aren’t expected to routinely reveal their nudity in every movie or TV show. These nude- queries follow the attraction power of scarcity. In many cases, there might not even be actual nude photos of the celebrities featured in the requests. Or just a handful of blurry screenshots from a few movies.

Hordes of celebrities have been victims of massive private data dumps, including the infamous Fappening on August 31, 2014, which leaked almost 500 private pictures of various celebs on the imageboard 4Chan, obtained via a breach of Apple’s iCloud services.

But, interestingly, the overall search trend for “nude celebrities” is dying out (see below).

The latest peak occurred just after the Fappening, in September 2014. It’s also worth noting that there’s no growing trend for the #1 lady on the “nude” leaderboard, Bella Thorne. Her pole position in the current rankings is mainly due to an event which took place in June 2019: she released her own topless photos on Twitter (see below) after being allegedly threatened by a hacker who had declared he was about to share a dump of naked photos, stolen from her compromised account.

If we apply the same type of trend test on other {celebrity} nude queries, we also notice the same sort of “hit-driven” pattern (a huge peak due to a scandal, then the trend quickly dies out, leaving room for another celeb in the nude).

SEO research, the naked truth

I researched via ahrefs the Top 100 of naked/nude {celebrity name} queries on Google USA and created a page for each celebrity mentioned ine the leaderboard. Don’t get too excited though: these pages don’t feature any nude pictures. See for instance the one dedicated to Bella Thorne, an American actress ranking #1 on Google USA for nude-related queries (293,000 searches per month in the USA!).

If we add the amount of all -naked queries, we get a total of 1,377,400 searches per month. -Nude queries give a total of 7,741,000 searches per month on Google USA.

There isn’t a single male celeb in the top 100. Searching for nude pictures of celebrities seems to be a male-driven – very sexist – phenomenon.

Most of the celebrities featured in the Top 100 are actresses, followed by a few singers and internet / media personalities. 

74% are American and most of them were born between 1980 and 1992), 10% in 1982 alone.

There were also two personalities in the top 100 not belonging to the entertainment industry. I’ve left them outside of the table.

Curious to know who they are?

Katie Hill, a former US Representative, who ranks for 30 000 “naked” searches and 175 000 “nude” searches per month. She was forced to resign in late 2019 after the leak of nude photos. 

And Melania Trump (naked: 21 000 searches / month, nude 75 000 searches per month). The search was triggered by naked pictures from her modelling past (dating back to 1996) resurfacing during the 2016 US presidential election campaign.