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XXX: Good for your brand, bad for your URL

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Friday Feature Photo: Coco Devine

Friday Feature Photo: The petite and sexy Coco Devine. She is XXX in all the good ways.

There is a lot of discussion about using .XXX as an adult alternative to .com.  AVN has a 5 part series about the ramifications of the dot xxx push. Although this discussion has taken place for the past few years, the issue is top news again because the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has a GAC (Government Advisory Committee) that is reviewing the issue before it decides the next step. The ultimate decision will determine whether “dot XXX” will be encouraged as a “dot-com” alternative for adult sites.

As it seems more likely that .XXX will be pushed, many sites have already reserved their .XXX URL.  So, the infamous www.sex.com would become www.sex.xxx. Seems like it could be sexy right? Not so fast. A .XXX TLD (top level domain) can seriously hurt your web business.

The purpose behind this is to let people know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a website contains adult content.  This is being done under the guise of child protection.  If you are in the adult industry, you know that any site that is on the level already implements child protection. In fact, Adult Entertainment is one of the biggest supporters of child protection and actively pursues new and better ways to keep inappropriate material from children. Fact is, the people who avoid child protection are not part of the legitimate adult industry, and they will continue to avoid it.

Dot triple X will only give people a false sense of security.  Any site that chooses will still be able to use a .com domain. Larry Magdid, creator of Safekids.com, says “As an Internet safety advocate, my concern about .XXX is that it could give parents a false sense of security…It would be like setting up a red-light district in a community while also allowing adult entertainment establishments to operate in residential shopping centers.”

Many people have purchased their .XXX to ensure that they are able to hold on to their branding. The ICANN seems to be interpreting this as industry support for the TLD.  However, this is not support – this is a reaction to the very real possibility of a new TLD and people not wanting to sacrifice their brand identity because they got on the bandwagon late.

From a website owner point-of-view the .XXX is bad for your site from a technical standpoint. Yes, people can block it, but the people who would do this are not your audience anyway. You don’t care if Joe Parent blocks .XXX but you do care if Google does.  Google already prevents their search auto-fill to populate for anything that is considered questionable material. It would be an easy step to block dot .XXX from appearing in any search results.  This would substantially limit organic traffic and completely nullify any benefits from SEO.

Our Friday Feature Photo links to a site with an xxx in the URL:  www.cocodivinexxx.com. But this is fine, because it is in the site name, not in the TLD.  Having xxx in your URL will not get you blocked. Having it as your TLD is going to cause you problems and loss of traffic.

There are many potentials for blocking, from search engines to internet browsers setting their safety defaults to automatically block .XXX. It also sets the site up for being blocked from merchant account and hosting companies that don’t want to be associated with a business that is blatantly adult.  With all of that, let’s not even talk about the potential to be riddled by spam through any contact information on the site, yikes!

Overall we feel that the .XXX is a bad move for any website.


Friday Feature Photo: Coco DevineThe Friday Feature Photo is the beautiful Coco Devine.  As she says, she is the newest, sexiest, most curvaceous girl on the web.  She is definitely right. Not only is she sexy she is also a great person to tweet with.  You can see her pics, videos and even talk to her live on her website webcam. Then go and chat her up on Twitter!

Go to her website: www.cocodivinexxx.com

Talk to her on Twitter @Coco_Divinexxx

You can call her for bookings at: 888-800-8761

or email her at [email protected]