More Australians spent the Olympics trawling for Internet porn than checking sporting results online, according to a report from Internet ratings company Media Metrix.

The report, which looks at Australia's online habits between January and September 2000, claims that one-third of the 6.6 million Australians connected to the Web - 12 percent of the country's population - visted an adult site during September.

Even the hype surrounding the Olympics was not enough to boost the appeal of the sporting portal niche, which lingered at 32 percent. The average amount of time Australians spent viewing Web porn in September was 38 minutes, roughly the same amount of time spent logged onto any sporting-related Web site.

This makes Australia the second-highest Web-porn viewing nation, ahead of Canada, the UK, France and Japan. The US is the world leader in Web-porn popularity, with 36 percent of online Americans visiting an adult site in September, according to the market researcher.

That was only slightly higher than Australia's 33 percent.

Other types of sites which were blitzed by the triple-X industry included those under the umbrella of government, news and information and education. Porn's popularity trailed close behind that of the business and finance sector, and the search engine community, the report said.

Media Metrix says the male-female split in Australian Internet take-up is roughly even. However, more than half the country's online population is aged between 12 and 34.

Australia's favourite adult sites during September were US-hosted - karaxxx.com, sexshare.com, tv69.com and porncity.com.

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