Craigslist's secret sauce: Smut

Craigslist has 17 million people visiting its site a month, but many of them are there for a little more that apartment rentals, concert tickets and miscellaneous junk.

Compete's Stephen Bagg shows that erotic services more than doubles the next category in terms of individual visitors. New York and Los Angeles have the most unique visitors trolling for erotic services. Cars for sale is the category that's typically a distant second--except for New York where "casual encounters" is second.

Bagg goes deeper into the stats to find that men seeking men are the power group in Craigslist.

Writes Bagg:

"A deeper look into the metrics reveals a real power group behind Craigslist’s impressive numbers: men seeking men. Even though they only enjoy Top 5 status in two cities by visitor volume, each month these Craigslist constituents view over 50% more pages and 20 more minutes on average searching these posts than any others – from apartment rentals to items for baby."

And you thought Craigslist was popular because of its delightfully communist leanings.