CYBERSPACE — Try this little experiment: open a new Google browser. Ready? Now type the word “porn” (we know you’ve done this before, it’s okay).
If you are in the United States, Canada or parts of Europe, there is a very good chance the top hit will be a site called Fuq.com. Depending on your location, Fuq.com might be ranked number-two or -three on Google, but it will definitely be up there, often topping the tube site with the biggest worldwide brand recognition, Pornhub, and its main competitors, XVideos and xHamster.
While Pornhub is perceived as having brand dominance in North America, XVideos is a traffic juggernaut worldwide and xHamster's stat reports are everywhere, many people, including many adult industry insiders, seem not to be aware of Fuq.com.
Topping Pornhub and the other big players in the adult site market is proof of some extremely serious SEO game, and it is surprising (and impressive) that the Dutch company behind Fuq.com — and other similar, bare-bones sites — has managed to fly under the radar for so long.
Fuq.com is owned by PB Web Media, a company based in Haarlem, Netherlands, which has the words “High Traffic Websites” right there on the logo. Located in a stylish Dutch brownstone (very similar to New York’s gentrified redbrick buildings), PB Web Media advertises itself as “the company behind a large and well-searched network of over 100 free adult sites and ‘browser game sites.’”
PB Web Media sites, according to the company, “have more than 30 million daily site visits worldwide. We offer customers the possibility to index links to their content in our database, so that these links are published on our network of websites. We serve hundreds of customers who link to more than 15 million adult videos and 100,000 online games.”
For over a decade, the company’s description continues, PB Web Media “has been at the forefront of referring to free adult and game content in this way. Our ambition is to expand this concept to other markets in the near future. Recently we moved to a monumental building in Haarlem to facilitate the growth of our company.”
And while they have kept a low profile — with much less name recognition than Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek and the publicity-averse WGCZ Holdings, owner of XVideos — PB Web Media have not been completely below the radar in the business side of the industry. The company is currently a Corporate Sponsor of the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) and some of their legal victories against trademark infringement have been publicized to XBIZ.
Unlike MindGeek, PB Web Media does not avoid using the word “adult,” in their recruiting material, which also boasts to potential tech recruits of providing a platform where “millions of people will experience your work,” a “pleasing work environment in a classic building,” a “creativity-enhancing green environment” with “healthy plants” for “increased performance and better relaxation” and even a “healthy lunch.”
“Every day between 13:15 and 13:45 lunch is prepared for you,” the website informs in Dutch to prospective coders, developers and SysAdmins, “so you can sit down like that. Only fresh and healthy food is served and there is a salad bar.” Their Facebook page displays a picture of a beer pong table.
But, as a simple Google search will show, behind this relaxed vibe and drinking games, this self-proclaimed “aggregator / portal / search engine” mega site has been incredibly focused on winning the SEO sweepstakes.
After all, not many players in adult, at least in terms of taming that pesky Google algorithm, can boast of topping Pornhub.