Money magazine knew this long ago when it first started issuing its “Best Places to Live” issue. Business magazines followed suit with their “Best Cities for Business” issues. Mimicking the British music press, Rolling Stone finally got around to issuing its lists of best rock albums and best singles.

All this was an inexact science, but at least the business and financial press could carefully weigh its rankings through comparative charts of crime rates, tax rates and arts organizations. Meanwhile, hordes of people yet to turn 30 scratched their heads in wonderment over Rolling Stones’ choice of top albums.

I first read about this new Google feature whilst perusing Time columnist Andrew Sullivan’s blog The Daily Dish. Entering the word “sex” into Google Lab’s search field, Sullivan found that, among the top 10 nations searching for sex on the Internet, Pakistan ranked first, Egypt second, Vietnam third and Iran fourth. Trailing out the list were other predominantly Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Quelle surprise. Who would have guessed that so many Internet users in so many devoutly conservative nations thirsted for the risqué?

Google Trends can narrow its results by regions as well as cities. And within the United States region, Sullivan mentioned that Salt Lake City ranked No. 8 nationally in Internet searches for sex.

Before getting carried away, however, it’s probably best to mention Google’s important note regarding the accuracy of its product. Long sentence short, pesky data-sampling issues and approximation tools mean that many city and region rankings may contain some inaccuracies. “We hope you find this service interesting and entertaining, but you probably don’t want to write your Ph.D dissertation based on this information,” the company says. Results proffered by Google Trends will be updated on a monthly basis. And, of course, the results are skewed from the beginning, as they’re based on households with Internet access.

In the meantime, I found the results of my own Google Trends queries eerily accurate, surprising and even disturbing. And because search queries at the wholesome end of the virtue scale—as we’ll call it for lack of a better term—proved so dead accurate, I feel I’ve little reason to doubt the product’s findings on the—how shall we say it?—darker end of the scale.

There’s something even charming about the way Salt Lakers search for their pornography, too. Doubtless more experienced than we, Las Vegans skip the formality and search for plain old “porn,” and so top the national list in that search.

I’ve since taken a shower following my rigorous research but find it interesting on several levels. LDS Church members will no doubt boil these rankings down to the scourge of this city’s Gentile populace, but I’ve other hunches. When authority forces something as all-powerful as human sexuality into the forbidden zone, the curious are bound to sneak a peek or two, or three or four. Few entities beside the LDS Church have given Internet pornography so much publicity as of late.

This is cache, read story here