The creator economy has grown into a major part of how people build audiences, promote their work, and connect followers with paid platforms and services. But creator opportunities are not distributed evenly, and having a large creator community does not always translate into stronger digital visibility.

To examine how creator search value varies across the country, Giggster analyzed nearly 5K verified, person-led Linktree profiles from across the United States, using data collected in July 2026. State-level comparisons were limited to markets with at least 50 analyzed creators.

The report looks at where creators generate the strongest typical search value, which states outperform the size of their creator footprint, and how evenly that value is distributed.

View the full methodology and breakdown here.

Key Takeaways

• Creator market size is not a reliable indicator of typical search value. Massachusetts leads the index despite having only 68 analyzed creators, while California’s much larger creator base ranks third and generates a smaller share of search value than its footprint would suggest.

• OnlyFans-linked profiles are a major driver of creator search visibility. They make up just over half of the national sample but account for more than three-quarters of total Ahrefs Traffic Value, with a median value about 8.2 times higher than other creator profiles.

• Creator search value is highly uneven within states. In every qualifying market, the top 10% of profiles generate more than four-fifths of total search value, showing that statewide totals are often driven by a relatively small group of creators.

• Different metrics produce different state leaders. Massachusetts ranks first for typical creator value, Florida overperforms most relative to its creator footprint, and Washington has the most concentrated search value. No single state dominates every measure. 

Massachusetts Leads: Why Creator Volume Doesn't Equal Search Dominance

What the data says:

• Massachusetts ranks No. 1 for typical creator search value, setting the benchmark at 100. Missouri follows at 86, while California ranks third at 75.

• California has the largest creator sample by far, with 2,694 analyzed creators. However, its typical creator search value is still 26% below Massachusetts. Missouri also has a much larger sample than Massachusetts, but remains 14% behind the leader.

• Washington ranks fourth with an index score of 46, less than half the Massachusetts benchmark. The gap grows further after Washington, with every remaining state scoring below one-third of the leader.

Size Is a Trap: Why Metro`s Massive Creator Base Underperform

What the data says:

• Florida and Washington punch furthest above their creator footprints. Florida generates 5.2% of total search value from just 1.9% of sampled creators, placing it 174% above its proportional share. Washington is 136% above, producing 13.9% of search value from 5.9% of creators.

• California dominates the sample, accounting for 55.8% of all creators and 35.2% of total search value. However, its search-value share is 37% lower than its creator footprint would suggest. Missouri and New York also fall below their proportional shares.

• Texas, Ohio, and Massachusetts generate more search value than their creator counts would suggest. Oregon records the largest shortfall at 62% below its proportional share, followed by Virginia at 40% below.

The OnlyFans Effect: How One Platform Controls Three-Quarters of Creator Visibility

What the data says: 

• OnlyFans links appear in a majority of the national creator sample. Across the state-based U.S. dataset, 2,657 of 4,827 creators, or 55.0%, had a detected OnlyFans link.

• OnlyFans-linked profiles account for an outsized share of measured search value. They represent 55.0% of the analyzed sample but generate 76.4% of its combined Ahrefs Traffic Value.

• The median Traffic Value for an OnlyFans-linked creator is about 8.2 times as high as for creators without a detected OnlyFans link.

What the data says:

• Massachusetts has the highest OnlyFans presence, with 71% of analyzed creators linking directly to the platform. California follows at 65% and has by far the largest number of OnlyFans-linked creators, with 1,751 of 2,694.

• OnlyFans links appear on more than half of creator profiles in Florida, Missouri, and Texas. Their shares range from 52% in Texas to 55% in Florida, while Ohio sits just below the halfway mark at 45%.

• OnlyFans presence is lowest in New York, where 25% of analyzed creators include a confirmed link. Oregon and Virginia also rank near the bottom at 27% and 31%, creating a 46-percentage-point gap between New York and Massachusetts.

Creator Inequality Is Staggering: The Top 10% Capture 80-96% of All Search Value

 What the data says:

• Washington has the most concentrated creator search value. Its top 10% of creators generate 96.3% of the state total, while a single creator accounts for 88.2%, far more than in any other state.

• Florida, Virginia, Texas, and New York also rely heavily on a small group of profiles. In each state, the top 10% of creators generate more than 90% of total search value, although no single creator dominates as strongly as in Washington.

• California has the lowest concentration among the 10 markets, but its top 10% still produce 81.6% of statewide search value. Missouri is the least dependent on one standout profile, with its leading creator accounting for just 7.6% of the state total.

Key Terms

Ahrefs Traffic Value

An estimate of the monthly cost of purchasing equivalent organic-search traffic through pay-per-click advertising. It is a modeled measure of search visibility, not actual website analytics, creator revenue, sponsorship value, or earnings.

Creator Search Value Index

A state-level score that compares its median creator Traffic Value with the leading state. The top-performing state receives a score of 100, and every other state is measured relative to that benchmark.

Share of Total Search Value

The percentage of the national sample’s combined Ahrefs Traffic Value generated by creators in a particular state.

Search Value Compared With Creator Share

A measure showing whether a state generates more or less search value than its share of creators would proportionally suggest. “Above” indicates overperformance, while “below” indicates underperformance.

Top 10% Share of State Search Value

The percentage of a state’s total Traffic Value generated by its highest-value 10% of analyzed creators. A higher percentage indicates that search value is more concentrated among a small group of profiles.

Top Creator Share of State Search Value

The percentage of a state’s total Traffic Value generated by its single highest-value creator.

Methodology

Study scope

This study examined the search value generated by U.S.-based, person-led creator Linktree pages. The unit of analysis was one verified creator Linktree page.

The original dataset was collected from Ahrefs Site Explorer’s Top Pages report for linktr.ee on July 20, 2026, with the location set to the United States and pages sorted by Traffic Value. The initial extraction covered approximately 60,000 Linktree pages.

After removing non-creator pages and verifying creator locations, the final state-based U.S. sample included 4,827 creator pages.

Measuring creator search value

The study used Ahrefs Organic Traffic Value as its primary metric. Ahrefs defines Traffic Value as the estimated monthly cost of a page’s organic search traffic if equivalent visits were purchased through pay-per-click advertising. It is calculated using estimated organic traffic and the cost-per-click values of the keywords for which the page ranks. (Ahrefs Help Center)

Traffic Value was treated as a measure of search-driven visibility and value, not creator income. The Ahrefs export also included URL Rating, estimated traffic, referring domains, keywords, top keyword, and top-keyword search volume. These fields supported data review, but Traffic Value was the only Ahrefs metric used in the published state rankings.

Creator verification and data cleaning

Each page was reviewed to determine whether it represented a person-led creator. Eligible profiles included influencers, artists, musicians, photographers, videographers, writers, podcasters, comedians, fitness creators, and food, fashion, lifestyle, or travel creators.

Business and organization pages were excluded. These included restaurants, stores, salons, gyms, studios, schools, churches, charities, news outlets, agencies, brands, venues, and other non-person entities.

A creator’s state was assigned using publicly available location evidence from their Linktree page, linked personal website, creator-owned social profiles, or other public biographical information. State assignment did not rely on the Ahrefs U.S. location filter alone. Pages without sufficient evidence of a U.S. state were excluded from state-level analysis.

State eligibility

States were required to have at least 50 verified creators in the dataset to appear in the state comparison tables. Ten states met this threshold.

The minimum sample requirement reduces the risk that a state’s position is determined by only a handful of profiles. States below the threshold were excluded from state rankings but remained in national calculations when their creators had a verified state assignment.

Creator counts represent each state’s presence in the study sample. They should not be interpreted as the total number of creators living in that state.

State rankings and calculations

Typical Creator Search Value

The primary ranking uses the median Ahrefs Traffic Value per creator in each qualifying state. The median was selected instead of the average to reduce the influence of a small number of exceptionally high-value profiles.

The results were converted into a leader-equals-100 index:

Creator Search Value Index = State median Traffic Value ÷ Highest state median Traffic Value × 100

Massachusetts recorded the highest median and therefore received an index score of 100. A score of 75 means the state’s median creator Traffic Value was equal to 75% of the leader’s median.

Search Value Compared With Creator Share

This analysis compares each state’s share of creators with its share of the national sample’s combined Traffic Value.

Share of All Creators = State creator count ÷ 4,827 × 100

Share of Total Search Value = State combined Traffic Value ÷ Combined Traffic Value of all 4,827 creators × 100

Search Value Compared With Creator Share =
(Share of Total Search Value ÷ Share of All Creators − 1) × 100

A positive result means a state generates a larger share of search value than its creator count would proportionally suggest. A negative result means its share of search value is smaller than its share of creators.

This table is ordered by the size of each state’s creator footprint in the dataset, not by the size of its overperformance or underperformance.

OnlyFans analysis

A creator was classified as OnlyFans-linked when their Linktree page contained a confirmed direct, creator-owned onlyfans.com link.

Creators were counted once, even when their page contained more than one OnlyFans link. Only detected direct links were counted; the study did not infer OnlyFans presence from usernames, profile descriptions, or references without a confirmed link.

The state percentage was calculated as:

OnlyFans Share = OnlyFans-linked creators ÷ All verified creators in the state × 100

States were ranked by this percentage rather than by the total number of OnlyFans-linked creators.

OnlyFans presence measures whether a direct link was visible at the time of collection. It does not indicate whether the account was active or how much the creator earned through the platform.

State OnlyFans Prevalence = OnlyFans-linked creators in the state ÷ All analyzed creators in the state × 100

Share of State Search Value From OnlyFans-Linked Creators = Combined Traffic Value of OnlyFans-linked creators in the state ÷ Combined Traffic Value of all analyzed creators in the state × 100

National OnlyFans Prevalence = 2,657 OnlyFans-linked creators ÷ 4,827 analyzed creators × 100

National Share of Search Value From OnlyFans-Linked Creators = Combined Traffic Value of all OnlyFans-linked creators ÷ Combined Traffic Value of all 4,827 creators × 100

Median Traffic Value Multiple = Median Traffic Value of OnlyFans-linked creators ÷ Median Traffic Value of creators without a detected OnlyFans link

These calculations show an association between detected OnlyFans links and Traffic Value. They do not establish that OnlyFans presence caused higher search value.

Search-value concentration

Creators were ranked from highest to lowest Traffic Value within each qualifying state.

Top 10% Share of State Search Value = Combined Traffic Value of the state’s highest-value 10% of creators ÷ State total Traffic Value × 100

Top Creator Share = Highest individual creator Traffic Value in the state ÷ State total Traffic Value × 100

These measures show how dependent a state’s total search value is on a relatively small number of profiles. A high concentration score does not mean the typical creator has a high Traffic Value.

Ranking and rounding rules

All calculations and rankings were based on unrounded values. Numbers were rounded only for presentation.

Where displayed values appeared equal after rounding, rank order was determined using the underlying unrounded result. No composite score combining typical value, total value, OnlyFans presence, and concentration was created; each table represents a separate analytical lens.

Things to keep in mind

Ahrefs Traffic Value is a modeled SEO estimate, not verified website analytics, revenue, creator income, sponsorship value, or OnlyFans earnings.

The dataset is a snapshot taken on July 20, 2026. Creator locations, Linktree links, search rankings, keyword values, and OnlyFans presence can change over time.

Aggregate Traffic Value can be heavily influenced by a small number of profiles. The study therefore uses the median for the primary state ranking and reports concentration separately.

The results describe creator Linktree pages that appeared in and could be verified from the study dataset. They do not measure every creator in the United States or the complete creator population of any state.

The source dataset was drawn from Ahrefs’ Top Pages report rather than from a random sample or census of U.S. creators. The findings describe creator Linktree pages captured and measurable by Ahrefs, which may favor profiles with stronger existing organic-search visibility. OnlyFans prevalence and other national percentages should therefore be interpreted as characteristics of the analyzed sample, not estimates for all U.S. creators.