ICM Registry is launching Search.xxx on Thursday. | iStock Internet to get porn search engine

Porn will now have its own search engine on the Internet — and there’s nothing the U.S. government can do about it.

ICM Registry, which runs .xxx, will launch its own search engine — Search.xxx — on Thursday.


“There’s enough porn for anyone who wants to find it,” said Stuart Lawley, ICM’s chief executive and president. “If people hate porn, they can keep away from it.”

The Internet is about to go through the biggest domain expansion in its history with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers considering more than 1,900 applications for domains such as .cloud, .bank and .blog.

When ICANN approved ICM’s application for the .xxx Internet domain last year, the U.S. government expressed disappointment. “ICANN ignored the clear advice of governments worldwide, including the U.S.,” Assistant Secretary of Commerce Larry Strickling told Fox News at the time. “This decision goes against the global public interest, and it will open the door to more Internet blocking by governments and undermine the stability and security of the Internet.”

Commerce declined to comment Wednesday on the .xxx search engine.

But Lawley said no government has blocked access to .xxx since the domain launched in December 2011. Since that time, .xxx has registered 240,000 Internet addresses, Lawley said. Its new search engine aims to drive more traffic to those domains by scanning 21 million pages of content.

ICM’s creation of a porn-specific search engine may be an indication of the future of the Internet naming space. There will most likely be other search engines created according to topic — whether for banks or blogs or cars, Lawley said.

For ICM, which is based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., there were several reasons to create a search engine for online adult-entertainment domains. Google and other search engines often mix porn results with nonporn results, and have recently changed algorithms that have resulted in the lower ranking of porn results, Lawley said.

Some major search engines draw data from previous searches to complete a search term, which can lead to awkward and embarrassing situations for the person doing a search with someone looking over the shoulder, Lawley said. That won’t happen in this red-light search district on the Web.

“What happens on search.xxx,” he said, “stays on search.xxx.”

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