As Christmas approaches, the highly profiled .XXX Top-Level Domain celebrates it’s first year of existence. Originally intended for a year 2000 launch, followed by a 2005 rollout plan, it was eventually approved by ICANN in 2011 and launched relatively shortly thereafter.
250 000 domains
Since the launch, more than 250 000 .XXX domain registrations have been made. In comparison to a rather large country TLD such as Poland (.PL in highest growth rate of all) it took 16 years for .PL to achieve similar registration numbers.
This generic TLD for sexually explicit material is being used for several purposes. Registrants tend to select the .XXX extension for:
- Registering desirable domain names unavailable in other TLDs (.COM for example)
- The use of adult connotations as a benefit to a marketing strategy (peta.xxx – animal protection, kite.xxx – kitesurfing)
- Shock-causing associations for humour and promotional purposes (popebenedict.xxx – pro-islamic site)
- Preventing common brand names being used by pornographic businesses (.XXX introduces rapid dispute resolution for well known brands)
From a search engine perspective, .XXX domains with pornographic content have been seen to rank higher than their .com equivalents. It is easier for parents, schools and employers to block the entire TLD, rather than using more complex and error-prone content-based filtering. As representatives of Google stated, Google wants to move all traffic from adult .com sites to .xxx sites for better content recognition.