'Net Features : gTLD

.XXX Domains Get Their Own Search Engine

Michael Garrity — 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 search term in the domain name, header, title, URL and page content. It will also look at the number of words on a page that describe the content, particularly if it’s an image or video, so the more words, the better. Relevancy will also change over time if a site sees an increase in inbound links.

For now, this is the only dedicated search engine for one of the new GTLDs registered with ICANN, but it could have important ramifications for all of them if it turns out to be a success. It is very likely that we could, and maybe even should, see owners of various new GTLDs (such as .house, .dog or .doctor) build their own search engine within the extension. In this sense, Search.xxx may be the most important experiment taking place in this whole GTLD fiasco, especially as we learn more about how Google and other search engines are going to index sites with these new domain extensions.

Those .XXX domain owners who don’t want to be listed on Search.xxx are able to opt-out by simply sending an email to ICM Registry’s support services.

Saudi Arabia Trying to Ban New gTLD Extensions

Michael Garrity — 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, and any comments received before September 26, concerning extensions that have been applied for, will be forwarded to independent evaluators. Most of the complaints are coming from major brands who feel that some gTLD applications fail to appropriately protect their trademarks.

Domain Name Brief - February 18, 2009

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:40:00 GMT

Apparently, ICANN's plan to launch new generic top-level domains is running a bit behind schedule thanks to the complexity of the issue, but it should be available before the end of the year. That withstanding, the state of the domain industry seems strong.

The Internet added 24 million new domain names in 2008, according to the fourth quarter 2008 Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign, Inc.

The year 2008 ended with a total base of 177 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domains (TLDs)- a 16 percent growth over the previous year. In the fourth quarter alone, more than 10.1 million new domain names were registered across all TLDs. The total base of .com and .net domain names grew to 90.4 million at the end of 2008 - a 12 percent increase over the previous year and a 1 percent increase over the third quarter of 2008.