Porn Surfing 101 > Navigation Tips

Free sites and blogs receive revenue if they send you to a pay site that you end up joining. Various methods are used by free sites to get you to go where they want you to go, which explains why navigation can be a pain when surfing for porn.

Banner and Text Ads

The most obvious and straightforward way of getting you to visit a pay site is through the display of banner ads and text links. Just click on the banner or text link and you are taken to the sponsor's site. Text and banner ads are a user-friendly means of encouraging you to visit sponsoring sites; they are how BananaGuide makes its suggestions known. But, elsewhere on the Net, other more intrusive methods are commonplace:

Popup Consoles

Sometimes when you click on a text or image link, a new screen "pops-up". This can happen when you enter a site, moving around within a site, or when you exit a site. When you try to close the screen, another one replaces it. This can repeat itself several times and in its worst form, you are taken into a loop, known as a "mouse-trap" or a "circle-jerk", that requires you to shut down your browser or even turn off your computer. Most surfers now use the pop-up blocker that's built into their browser to keep this problem under control.

Misleading Links

These are text or image links that take you to somewhere other than you expected. A common form is when the webmaster hides the entrance to a free site. The splash page of the site will have some text is larger letters, such as "ENTER HERE". You click on the link and are taken somewhere else completely. Other varieties of misleading links are "Click here for hot pics" "Next gallery" or a thumbnail photo that takes goes to a pay site instead of the full-sized photo.

Unfortunately for surfers, misleading links are ubiquitous on the adult Web.

Porn Portals

There are hundreds of directories, search engines, review sites and blogs that specialize in gay porn -- and most of them are just plain awful. The reason most gay porn portals are not very good is because they are primarily designed to make their owners money by sending you to pay sites rather than by helping you find what you want.  

Review Sites

When BananaGuide launched in 2000 it was the very first site to specialize in providing objective reviews of gay membership sites. In recent years, review sites have become commonplace, though really good ones are still quite rare. Here are a few review sites aside from BananaGuide that we think do a good job:

Gay Demon started doing site reviews shortly after BananaGuide.

The Best Porn, which covers both straight and gay sites, went online in 2003.

Just Us Boys started doing site reviews in 2006.

Porn Blogs

There are a zillion porn blogs that offer surfers free photos or video clips. Often it you click on a photo in the blog you'll be taken to the paysite that provided the photo. If you already know that the site is a good one it's a safe bet to join, but if you're not sure try to find a review of the site from a trusted source, like BananaGuide.

Directories (link lists)

Below are three of the better gay adult directories. Each has very good coverage and significant editorial input - in other words real human beings look at the sites before they are listed in the directory.

Fab Free Sites, which used to be a part of BananaGuide, lists thousands of free sites and is updated every Thursday.

Hunkhunter's Haunts is the most comprehensive directory of gay free and Adult Entertainment Network (AEN) sites on the Net. Sites are categorized and rated with little penis icons according to the number of pictures they offer.

ManPics is an enormous directory of free and AEN sites - and it has no advertising! Updated weekly.