Does 'XXX' in Domain get filtered by Google

[Add3.com]

I have a friend that has xxx in there domain and they are a religious based sex/porn addiction company but they don't show up for the queries that they are optimized against. They have a 12+ year old domain, all good health signs in quality links and press from trusted companies. Google sends them adult traffic, mostly 'trolls' and not the users they are looking for.

Has anyone experienced domain word filtering and have a work around or solution? I posted in the Google Webmaster help forums and that community seems a little 'high on their horses' and are trying to hard to be cool. I am not too religious and don't necessarily support the views of the website but just trying to help a friend of a friend with a topic that I have never encountered.

here is the url: xxxchurch.com

Thanks,

Brian

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hmmm... This is a hard one. (Oh man, did not mean to make the intentional sex referrence)

Yes, Google has made changes in it's algorithm in the past year that makes porn harder to search for on the Internet. These changes don't filter the porn per se - except when "Safe search" is set to on - but it does mean that you must be much more specific in your search queries to find what you are looking for. For example, the query "boobs" generally returns almost no porn in Google, but the query "boobs porn" will.

If I were building an algorythm to separate porn sites from non, a large amount of XXX in the incoming anchor text, or in the URL, would probably trigger it.

Oh the other hand, I'm inclined to agree with George - seems like there's something more going on here. The backlink profile isn't terrible.... but there's definitely a footprint of comment spam in there. I won't link directly, but some of the suspect, off-topic links I found include:

http://www.takarat.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=750&page=3
http://www.omyogapages.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43&page=7
http://www.atthepicketfence.com/2011/09/behind-blog-with-savvy-southern-style.html
http://www.marypoppins-homesweethome.com/2011/07/what-is-it-with-us-girls-and-ikea.html

These are pretty terrible   It's possible that there's 100's or 1000's more we're not seeing, and these are causing either a manual or algorithmic penalty.

My advice:

1. Check with Google Webmaster Tools for any messages - especially unnatural link warnings.

2. File a reconsideration request, even if you don't have any messages in GWT. Explain your concerns. Matt Cutts, the head of the Webspam team, helped write the original adult filter algorithms. He might take a special interest if you can get it to his attention.

   But mostly, what you're looking for is verification, or not, of a penalty.

3. You may need to clean up the links. Do your best to remove any suspect links. Use the disavow tool as a last resort.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

[GeorgeAndrews]

I doubt there's a filter against xxx, but that doesn't mean there isn't something in the algos that checks for a spammy link profile more aggressively if the xxx is there.

I ran through the first 5 pages of links in Open Site Explorer, and their highest authority links mainly contain the branded keyword phrase "xxx church". Could use some diversity in anchor text. Just because Penguin hit for exact match anchor text for spammy links (from spammy sites and tactics), it doesn't mean you can't use "Check out this porn addiction recovery site if you're having issues with porn in your house." and link to the site with the underlined text.

There may be some more questions to ask. What are their link building efforts?

A number of pages from http://blog.internetsafety.com with incoming links no longer resolve (404 not found). There are lots of links that actually do look Penguin bait.

It could be link diversity. It could be low quality links. It could be tons of links coming from pages that are now resolving as 404s.

Sorry the news isn't great, but I really don't think it's the domain name that is the problem.