Despite the growing popularity of social networking sites, porn is still in the battle for Internet space supremacy. Researchers say that porn has dropped in terms of searches but that it still makes up a large chunk of available content on the Internet.

The amount of adult material on the Internet dropped 9 percent but it still makes up 35 percent of online pages, according to a 2007 study by Optenet, a content-filtering firm. The Spanish-based company reported that there were still over 155 million X-rated pages on the Web. E-commerce took a distant second with an 11 percent chunk for most real estate on the Net. Forums, sports and education rounded out the top five for the most Web space.

Optenet reported that it considered a few of the searched topics to be “alarming” due to the involved controversial nature. Searches for “pro anorexia and bulimia” increased by 470 percent, sites that portrayed racism increased by 70 percent, while sexual abuse sites increased by more than 18 percent, according to Optenet’s survey. Porn may be the safest alternative for adults, compared to the aforementioned growing interests.

Bill Tancer, of the Internet traffic monitoring company Hitwise, conducted a study on 10 million Internet users to determine what online users were looking up. Tancer determined that porn-related searches dropped from 20 to 10 percent over the past 10 years due to social networking sites, according to an early September report by Reuters.

YouPorn fans have Facebook and Myspace to point the fingers at.