"Adult-only porn videos and DVDs cannot be sold in the UK by mail order, the web or phone, the High Court has ruled."

"Explicit videos must be sold in person."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4573507.stm

Can you please clarify the importance of this news with the search industry?

Thanks :)

"the sheer volume of visits to pornographic sites -- 18.8 percent of all traffic" (US)
http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/34233.html

"After analyzing 22 million searches on file-sharing networks, Palisade found that 73 percent of all movie searches were for pornography"
(note: that's P2P, but probably indicative)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/culture/20031008-091303-3380r.htm

"more than a quarter of the entire U.K. Internet population visited porn sites in one single month." (2003)
http://www.xbiz.com/news_piece.php?id=1161

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Or, using google.co.uk (from the US) and setting the search for adult dvds to "pages from UK" I get 4,100,000 returns and a full compliment of adwords ads. All on the first page of the serp appear to be in violation of this ruling.

Interesting, and how does this relate to shopping & comparison search engines?

Froogle UK, as an example, on adult dvd returns 203,000 total. NSFW, btw, Nacho.

Can you please clarify the importance of this news with the search industry?

Interesting, and how does this relate to shopping & comparison search engines?
Seems that the adult market is the biggest commercial market on the internet, and that the most frequently performed search terms are overwhelmingly adult. Therefore significant changes in how this market may operate on the internet are certainly noteworthy in SEM.

I guess the problem is simply that adult search is such an incredibly specialised market, with the sort of extreme pressures and technical requirements, that most SEO's would not be up to the bar of competence to work successfully in it.

That includes myself, by the way - for the time being at least. :)

Those questions are asked with a moderator hat so that the dots could be connected between that news and the search industry and this forum's topic (shopping & comparison engines), since many member's sometimes don't bother reading the news stories. Therefore it is important to describe as best as possible what your intentions are when linking to them.

Personally, I have nothing to do with the "Adult" business but I highly respect anyone in it. I'm aware of how mighty competitive and lucrative it is.

I'm just glad to see this thread take the right direction and clarification.

one of the most challenging let rewarding fields to be working in IMO. I think it was only a matter of time that this ruling was given in the UK. I wonder what happens if you use your laptop to run your online store considering its portable (just a thought brian :) )

Im glad too Nacho. I would hate to see 100 "click to mine" links