We follow a regular publishing schedule. Top Selling Porn Stars (straight and gay) and Top Selling Trans Stars are released quarterly, covering the preceding three months. Category Trends also come out quarterly, on the same schedule. Popular Searches by State and Popular Searches by Country are published bi-monthly, each covering a two-month window. At the end of each year, we publish a comprehensive Year-End Report that includes the full-year category trends, the Top 100 stars of the year, and the top trans stars of the year. Occasional thematic features are published between these recurring reports.

Our data is compiled from billions of visits spanning more than two decades of AEBN operation. The quarterly category trends go back to 2001, giving us a continuous 25+ year view of how content preferences have evolved. Our year-end Top 100 star rankings have been published annually since 2016. We compiled this data internally a few times prior to 2016, but it was not published. The popular searches by state and country have been tracked for over a decade in markets we had enough analytics to compile results from. This depth of historical data allows us to identify long-term shifts in consumer behavior that shorter time frames would miss.

Yes, we publish this data to inform and educate. You are welcome to reference our findings and share links to our posts. If you're publishing your own analysis based on our data, we appreciate a citation or link back to the original post so others can explore the full context and so we can see how you found the data useful. For media inquiries, permission requests, or custom data questions, reach out to us at contactus@aebn.net.

Popular search terms are the most frequently entered relevant words across our sites in the given time frame. Popular search terms are not necessarily the most searched for words. Terms like porn, ass, and fuck are highly searched but they don't give much insight into the interest of the consumer because of their broad nature. Overly broad terms are removed from the search results until we get to the most popular descriptive terms. These terms frequently include the titles of movies, series, studios, stars, directors and some sex acts and genres of content. The results may sometimes seem like a typo though they are more likely the clever naming conventions that porn studios have used for years in creating movie titles. Other unusual terms may make more sense when the search region is taken into consideration. Emphasis is placed on results that are generating consumer purchases.

The categories of content are in order by sales volume. The sales data has been normalized so that the hottest selling category of content gets a score of 100. If the next highest category gets at 85 then it is selling at 85% of the level of the most popular content at 100%. Presenting the data this way gives some perspective as to how much more or less any category of content is selling compared to any other category of content while not publishing sensitive financial data. Categories of content with sales volumes that fall below 1 are excluded from the published results.

The Top Stars list are based on consumer purchases. The stars in the highest selling scenes of the week are compiled into a top list. This list is published through the Top Star sales tool in the AEBN affiliate program and posted on Twitter @aebn. The quarterly and yearly top star results are compiled from the weekly data.

The quarterly Top 25 lists are a snapshot of which stars generated the most purchases during a specific three-month period. The year-end Top 100, on the other hand, aggregates the full years' worth of data into a single comprehensive ranking. A star who consistently performs well across all four quarters will rank higher in the year-end list than one who had a single breakout quarter.

Consumer purchasing patterns differ significantly across these categories. Combining them into a single ranking would obscure the trends specific to each audience. A star who tops the gay charts may rank differently against the broader straight market, and vice versa. By publishing separate Top 25 lists for straight and gay stars, and a Top 10 list for trans stars, we give each audience a clear picture of what's driving purchases in their area of interest without conflating different markets.

We chose to post a snapshot of top male talent during the summer months outside of the yearly wrap-ups and busy award season where it might get overlooked. We were internally curious about Male stars on the straight theater that don’t typically get featured in our other top star lists and thought it would be interesting for our audience.