Let’s talk about .XXX

Yeah, we know, the average person doesn’t casually throw up a porn site, but what you might not know is that .XXX is also important for protecting your brand and thus your organization’s image. Why you ask? Well, for example, the Vatican just had a big scare. They found that Vatican.xxx was registered to someone, and it wasn’t them. The good news is that after their initial panic, a who.is query shows the domain is registered to the ICM registry (responsible for .XXX), so it’s more than likely they put a hold on the domain.

As Devin Coldewey wrote on TechCrunch, “It’s a warning to all those companies and institutions that may have opted not to purchase this domain variation, and although it’s not the only time this will happen, it might be the funniest.”

Funny as long as it’s not happening to you.

That’s something to keep in mind: your name is the single most searched term people use to find you. If the results show YourName.xxx as well as YourName.com/org/biz/net, visitors could be confused or distracted, resulting in less traffic to your site. Obviously, the choice on how you deal with the availability of this new top level domain (TLD) is up to you. Aside from buying the domain you could make sure people know you are not associated with the content on YourName.xxx via a blogpost or some other messaging, as well. We’re just here to provide you with the information.

To further protect your brand, simply register YourBrand.xxx and set it to resolve to a blank page. That will successfully secure your brand in one easy step and you can rest assured your customers won’t land on the wrong site.

Learn more about .XXX Today