"Yippee!!!" won't be what Disney, Barbie, CNN, Honda, Mercedes and others will say when they find that they topped the list of 10 brands most commonly associated with pornography on the Internet.
Cyveillance, a provider of online brand protection, reports that pornographic Web sites place company names on hidden or visible text and in metatags, presumably without the owners' knowledge.
"Pornography is one of the largest and fastest growing segments of the Internet," said Christopher Young, president and COO of Cyveillance. "These sites are becoming increasingly savvy about how to lure consumers who are searching the Net for popular brands."
They do this by using search engine magnets, metatags and links, so when consumers type in seemingly innocuous search terms, they wind up at porn sites.
"Companies that value their brands simply cannot afford this form of mistaken identity," Young said.
The other five brand names most often found in pornographic Web sites are Levi's, ESPN, the NBA, Chevy and Nintendo, respectively. The 10 brands that topped the Cyveillance list were referenced on an average of 198 Web sites containing pornographic content.
The study is based on a detailed analysis of more than 300,000 Web pages. Of the 300,000 pages, 75,000 were suspected of containing pornographic material and, of those, approximately 25 percent contained one or more of the nearly 120 popular brands included in the study.
The Virginia-based Cyveillance offers products that help customers identify and take action against infringement in the areas of pornography, copyright and trademark misuse, e-commerce and online rumors.
The Cyveillance Web site is locatated at www.cyveillance.com.
