What’s in a name? Or should that be what’s in a domain name. Quite a lot actually. Which is why in the age of the internet it pays to do your homework before settling on one for a domain name for any portal.

Especially if, as is the case with the UK Government’s heavily publicised website, www.direct.gov.uk you end up with embarrassing links to a gay porn website.

Click through the Government website and eventually you will come to a child friendly  kids section titled Buster’s World complete with image of a friendly, tail wagging do dog (Buster presumably) wearing a sheriff’s badge who guides kids around the site.

Type Buster’s World into search engines however and forget that all important apostrophe, and a site of a quite different kind altogether pops up: a fetish gay porn site concerning explicit adult content. Now this you don’t want your kids viewing.

The gaffe came to light on marketing website The Drum after a blogger picked up on a Falkirk mother’s concerns raised on Twitter.

“Who at Direct Gov thought that the domain name of a gay porn site was a good idea for their Kids portal??” she rightly asked.

Given that child safety is supposed to be one of the Government overriding concerns, with campaigns on topics such as bullying and Internet grooming high on the political agenda, the Buster’s World gaffe represents a monumental gaffe and is likely to see heads roll.

Currently the porn site is the No.1 hit via Google when searching for “Busters World” with results unfiltered. DirectGovkids was launched in 2007 and it’s unclear whether the porn site of similar name existed prior to that or was added after.

If the porn site existed beforehand whoever came up with the name for the portal won’t be the first to fall foul of embarrassing and poor market research.

Pity the parishoners of America’s Cumming First United Methodist Church having to check their newsletter at, www.cummingfirst.com. Or what about Who Represents which details lawyers, agents, and contacts for celebrities etc which can be found at www.whorepresents.com. Then again maybe you fancy a custom made pen at www.penisland.net which has more than a few rather more salacious impostors out there.

Want to find a therapist why not try www.therapistfinder.com. Although after seeing that spelled out on your computer you might well need a lie down, if so you might try booking a holiday, in say, oh I dunno Lake Tahoe perhaps at. www.gotahoe.com.

And it’s not just the internet. Classic brand name balls ups include New Zeland drink SARS and German chocolate bar Zit. Still it could have been worse: what about Swedish candybar Plopp and another Danish candybar called Spunk.

Then there’s Clairol who introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for sh*t there ( a lesson also learned by Rolls Royce when they introduced the Silver Mist series in Germany which quickly became the Silver Cloud) and Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux who used the slogan “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux” in their American campaign.

All of which goes to show when it comes to marketing, it pays to do your homework,  not to mention think what your domain name says and reads like.

A lesson those in charge of branding at DirectGov might need to go back to school to learn.