MARINA DEL REY, Calif. — ICM Registry received approval from ICANN this morning to move forward with plans to create a .porn generic top-level domain.
ICANN's decision to grant initial approval is a strategic victory for the .xxx operator, which last month also received the green light on another gTLD, .adult.
Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry, told XBIZ that the firm plans on locking up another gTLD, .sex, before the end of the month.
"In our opinion and having studied the healthy rankings of .xxx sites in the major search engines against particular keywords, we see .porn as being an invaluable SEO tool for many providers," Lawley said. "We have now gained approval for .adult and .porn, and we expect .sex to gained approval in a similar vein in just a few weeks, as its application was almost identical to those for .porn and .adult."
Lawley noted that the registry is moving forward with its "grandfathering program," that allocates the .porn and .adult equivalent automatically for the corresponding .xxx holder with no obligation to buy.
Applications that pass ICANN's Initial Evaluation stage, based on financial and technical tests, and that do not face any objections or string contention are eligible to proceed with execution of a registry agreement.