.XXX Domains Get Their Own Search Engine

'Net Features : wm-domains — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 19:00:00 GMT

A recent email sent out by ICM Registry announced next week's launch of a new search engine “dedicated to developed .XXX websites and .XXX content." The purpose is apparently to help bring real value to these unique domain extensions by providing users with “highly relevant search results” that give the domain owners additional traffic for no extra cost. This search engine, conveniently named Search.xxx, will only crawl .XXX sites that already feature developed content, so sites that are hosted at a parked service provider won’t be included in the searches. Any .XXX website that can be found in a user’s browser can also be found by ICM’s search engine, but since it specifically looks at that particular domain extension, if any content links to a site or sites with other TLDs, the crawler will stop following it. The crawler will also respect the robots.txt file, which can be used to restrict access to a site, and if a .XXX domain is forwarded to another domain, the search engine will continue to follow the search results of the URL, if it is being masked. Otherwise, the site will only be crawled if it ends with a .XXX domain. And, if an owner uses multiple domains (including other TLDs) for the same site, they must make sure that their relative links within the site allow the crawler to navigate through them. Among the many factors that play a role in adding to the relevance of a site’s search rankings are the appearance of the...(read more)

Saudi Arabia Trying to Ban New gTLD Extensions

'Net Features : wm-domains — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:30:00 GMT

The war against porn is still being waged in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the latest casualties are a slew of new generic top-level domains (gTLD) that have been applied for in recent months. Claiming that they will “encourage pornography” Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 – among other complaints Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 – the Saudi government has officially objected to 163 new gTLD applications registered with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Some of the extensions that raised the ire of the Saudi Communication and Information Technology Commission are .virgin (applied for by Virgin Group) and .baby, which Johnson & Johnson applied for (among others), presumably to market their baby-oriented health care products. Other gTLD strings that made the list were .hot, .sex, .porn (obviously), .sexy and even .dating, because who knows where that may lead. Not every complaint was sex-related, however. The Saudi government took umbrage with any extensions that are related to alcohol or gambling on apparent moral and health-related grounds. This includes .wine, .bar, .vodka, .pub, .casino, .poker and many more. Religious extensions (.bible, .catholic, .islam, etc.) also caused consternation among Saudi officials, as well as the especially grievous .wtf, .sucks and .tattoo. ICANN, for its part, foresaw objections and complaints being a major aspect of the new gTLD expansion process...(read more)

Domain Masters : gTLD

.XXX Domains Get Their Own Search Engine

Saudi Arabia Trying to Ban New gTLD Extensions