Originally Posted by AdultAudiences

Let me add something to the discussion -- a point that I don't think has been brought up before.

Disclaimer: Before I say anything, I should mention that I'm an adult industry outsider. Yes, I have a lot of adult domains; but they're not developed at this stage. I concentrate on domain names as such. Also, I realize that .XXX has been a controversial and divisive issue; and, although I own about 400 .XXX domains, my job as a domain investor is to take calculated risks -- and not to take sides. .XXX has pros and cons. It can be debated which outweigh which. I just happen to be mentioning a potential benefit. It's up to you to decide how plausible or significant it might be.

Let's leave aside how Search.xxx itself will affect adult website traffic. Think about Google or any generic search engine whose job it is to get relevant results in front of people. Now imagine that you're Google's software engineer, and it's time to tweak the algorithm.

If you were Google, what would you want the Google algorithm do with long-tail search phrases like these:

"porn star salary"
"salary of porno"
"salary for porno"
"salary porn star"
"porn movie salary"
"adult industry salary"
"salary in porno"
"what is salary porn"
"average adult salary"
"adult star salary"
"salary porno"
"salary for adult"
etc. ?

Obviously, Google will recognize that PornStarSalary.com matches with "porn star salary" and so forth for each phrase. But is that the best we can do? Ideally, the search engine would be smart enough to detect that every single one of these long-tail searches is basically the word "salary" plus some wild-card adult terms -- "salary" + {XXX stuff}. That's how we perceive a list like this, right? And we want a search engine to think like us.

Well, if I were Google, I would say to myself, "You know, the .XXX TLD is basically just wild-card, general-purpose adult content. So let's interpret the .XXX TLD as being equal to any {XXX stuff} in the search phrase." And then I'd tweak my algorithm so that the .XXX extension itself is treated as a match for any adult keywords in the search phrase. In other words, a domain like Salary.XXX should match with all of the search phrases above.

I'm NOT saying that this happens currently. I'm just saying that if you or I were updating Google's algorithm, this is what we'd do to make it smarter -- just because it helps Google deliver more relevant content. After all, someone who searches for any of the phrases above would probably be interested in whatever content is on a website called Salary.XXX. Wouldn't you say so?

Personally, I think Google would have to be blind not to do something like this. It just makes sense to interpret the .XXX TLD as representing adult themes. So if I were a gambling man, I'd expect this modification of Google's algorithm to happen in the next year or two.

Would that give .XXX an advantage as a catch-all for unpredictable adult long-tail phrases? It might -- but not always. For example, as far as this goes, I see no advantage to PornVideo.xxx compared to PornVideo.com. Why not? Because the keywords are clearly adult, and the .XXX TLD adds no additional information. But there's a world of difference between Salary.xxx and Salary.com. Google SHOULD distinguish between the two. So Google WILL.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that I do see an advantage for many .XXX domains as a result.