DNN recently analyzed the top 1,000,000 most heavily trafficked and popular websites in the world, according to Alexa, and the results were shocking when we specifically looked at the now 1 year old active dot XXX extension. Our research revealed that only 61 developed websites that are using the .XXX extension placed inside the top 1 million of the most visited sites in the world. Many would expect these adult-oriented websites to be pulling in massive amounts of traffic and interest soon after launching, but apparently that isn’t the case so far.  [source]

One year later… Now what?

The .XXX extension, a sponsored top level domain operated by ICM Registry has been live for a year now, as was originally reported on April 15, 2011, which is when .XXX was added to the root servers and domains such as Sex.XXX and Porn.XXX were now resolving as live sites on the web, readily available to be accessed as any other extension, all over the world. Dot XXX domain names have been available for anyone to register and develop since December 6, 2011, after the sunrise and land-rush phases concluded which were held from September 7 – November 25, 2011. The registry operator also recently announced that it will be applying for the .Sex, .Adult and .Porn TLDs.

Earlier this month ICANN and the ICM Registry released .XXX domain registration stats and the magic number was said to be 215,835. That number represents how many .XXX domains ICM Registry had under its management as of April 6, 2012 when the press release went out. Out of all those registrations 132,859 are adult-oriented and a whopping 82,976 are non-adult defensive registrations, domains of celebrities and sensitive uses, and those ICM Registry reserved for future uses and sales under the .XXX Premium Names Program and the .XXX Adult Performer Program.

Stuart Lawley, the founder and CEO of ICM Registry LLC was interviewed by DomainSherpa about two weeks ago, where he shared some interesting data about the .XXX extension during the 1 hour video interview with Michael Cyger. We’ve highlighted below the few bits and pieces which stand out the most:

• Currently .XXX is averaging 125 – 150 new registrations per day
• $25 million in revenues in the 4th quarter for ICM Registry
• Around 132,000 are normal registrations, which they classified as “recurring revenue domains”
• Actual number of “built out sites” that they are aware of and can acknowledge is 27,555 at this point

Lawley went on to highlight some of the most expensive and “premium” triple X domains sold to date, which were Gay.XXX for $500,000, Fetish.XXX for $300,000, Shemales.XXX for $200,000, Toys.XXX for $125,000, Sexy.XXX for $100,000, Dating.XXX for $100,000, FootFetish.XXX for $89,000. In a more recent interview with Bloomberg just this past weekend Lawley mentioned that they also just sold Movies.XXX for $100,000.

Lack of any “real” developments…

Now it’s only been approximately 5 month’s that the general public have had the opportunity to freely register any available .XXX domain that they desire, at any one of their favorite domain registrar’s such as Go Daddy or Register.com for example, and then be able to immediately develop their domain in any way they choose.  We would not have thought that only 61 domains in total would be ranking inside the top 1,000,000 most visited sites in the world. That number was suppose to be exponentially higher by all accounts even a few month’s in, which we now are well into 2012, however reality says otherwise.

It is still very early on in the game as some would argue for this year old extension, but the numbers and data which DNN uncovered speak for itself as far as development of these newly available domains go. The concrete data shows that there is a huge disconnect somewhere. For the ICM Registry and hopeful .XXX domain investors that have spent $80 – $100 on average per registration, it is nothing really to get overly excited about, so far into this journey.

Many .XXX domains have been registered at this point, that is old news already. Some have been developed of course, most commonly as YouTube style video portals serving up adult content. Very few of the sites using the DOT XXX extension are taking off though and generating the buzz and activity that a website requires in order to become profitable and a success over the long run.

This begs the question, does the new .XXX extension really help you if you are running an adult oriented website, or is it going to do just the opposite and backfire at a certain point, and hurt your online image, website traffic, etc.? Well established companies from the adult industry and the thousands of TGP/Tube/Freebie adult site operators don’t seem to be rushing to switch over their existing sites to the newly available .XXX domains.

.XXX has a long way to go…

For those wondering about some comparisons, we’ve got that for you too. It’s been two years since the .CO extension was re-launched, making a huge splash within the domainer community and generating a ton of buzz in the mainstream world. The “hip and new” ccTLD which is operated by .CO Internet S.A.S  has been unrestricted (available for anybody to register throughout the world) since July of 2011, and it currently has 1,367 domains inside the top 1,000,000 according to Alexa.com.

More than half of the sites found in Alexa’s comprehensive ranking of the top 1,000,000 sites in the world are using the dot COM (.com) extension, 542,769 sites to be exact.

It’s highly unlikely, without a major paradigm shift, that .XXX or any other newly introduced extension in the near future will ever dominate Alexa’s list. Other new gTLD extensions that plan to roll out an extension targeting a niche (like .xxx) or a broader-based audience (like .co) should take heed of the growth patterns evident here and plan accordingly.