With 74 searches per thousand inhabitants, Ticino is well at the top of the Swiss cantons for online searches related to escorts, according to a study published by G-IT AG. This is more than double that of Jura, second in the ranking with 32 searches, and more than five times more than Zurich, which has 14.
Valais reaches 28 monthly searches per 1000 inhabitants, Geneva 27 and Vaud 25. Graubünden and Friborg follow with 24, ahead of Neuchâtel, at 21. Berne displays 12 queries per 1000 inhabitants, while Appenzell Ausserrhoden closes the ranking with 8.
Italy, a pole of attraction
The border situation in Ticino plays an important role, underlines Tio Online. From Switzerland, around 9180 monthly searches are for escorts in Italy. Among them, 8670 relate to Como. The term “como escort” alone totals 8,100 searches per month, more than queries associated with Lugano, Locarno or other Ticino cities.
The study puts forward several hypotheses, including geographic proximity or price differences. But its authors specify that search data does not make it possible to identify the motivations of Internet users. A comparable phenomenon exists in the Geneva region, where Annemasse totals 6,420 monthly searches from Switzerland.
Could this strong orientation towards Italy distort Ticino’s first place? The study tested several scenarios excluding research concerning the Italian border area and Milan. Ticino would nevertheless retain first place in Switzerland for searches for “escorts” relative to its population.
“Sex” in German, “escort” in French
The vocabulary used varies according to linguistic regions. In Ticino and French-speaking Switzerland, searches generally combine the word “escort” with a city name. In German-speaking Switzerland, users more often use the term “sex” followed by a locality, such as “sex Bern” or “sex Basel”. This last category represents 796,590 monthly searches in Switzerland, compared to 10,470 for the Ticino localities.
This difference is essential: the first place in Ticino concerns searches containing the word “escort”. It does not allow us to conclude that the overall demand for sexual services would be higher there than in the other cantons.
The analysis covers more than a million monthly queries made in Switzerland on Google, related to escorts, erotic contacts and erotic massages. It was carried out using 4,248 terms in Italian, German, French and English, with the Semrush and Google Trends tools. G-IT AG notably operates the erotic ad platform gingr.ch.
