But despite China’s formidably large population, the effect on the adult industry will probably be negligible.
Online guru Brandon Shalton told XBIZ that China censoring Google’s news service is no big deal – they already censor regular Google search results as it is.
“Adult sites don't really put out press releases to mainstream,” said Shalton, who founded the traffic analysis service T3Report.com.
That said, YouTube still draws traffic from China, but according to Shalton, it’s hard to measure how much. On top of that, seeing adult content on YouTube requires user registration, and adult sites usually draw dial-in traffic from surfers who watch watermarked teaser videos.
“The adult content on YouTube is more of the user-genereated stuff,” Shalton said. “Clever pornographers try to get their stuff in, but I don’t see any real impact on adult.”
Rioting in Tibet sparked the Chinese government’s actions, which have led to the deaths of 80, along with the bans on Google News and YouTube.
The rioting started in the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa on March 10, in observance of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.
Google said it knew about the ban on two of its premier sites.
"We believe that YouTube offers citizens the world over a vital window on their cultures and societies and that they should not be denied access to video information," Google’s statement said.