EURid the registry for the .Eu TLD released a study today ahead of its 7th Birthday.
To date there are over 3.74 Million .Eu registrations.
Over 1.84 million EU residents have registered at least one .eu domain name, with 25% of those having registered more than one.
“The research also shows that the majority of .eu users are in business, ambitious, tech-savvy and aiming for expansion, which is where the .eu TLD is important in projecting a continent-wide image.”
A valuable asset
Perception of .eu is reinforced by its performance on the IDNX index, which reflects the value attributed by the market to domain names and their related extensions. Since the index’s launch in 2006, .eu has consistently ranked among the big players on the domain name market.
The IDNX index, created by internet entrepreneur and scientist Thies Lindenthal, is published on Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg. The index shows the evolution of the relative value of a domain name in different extensions compared with a normalised value of 100 in 2006.
“Our performance on the IDNX index and our consistently high renewal rates of above 80% lead us to believe that since launching seven years ago we have come to be considered a valuable asset to the domain name industry and the European public,” commented Marc Van Wesemael. “We are looking forward to the next years, continuing to consolidate our operations, simplify processes for .eu accredited registrars and add value to our domain name product for .eu users.”
EURid’s research sampled more than 1 000 participants from throughout the European Union. More information on the IDNX index can be found at idnx.com.
its all about selling domains – not using them
Brand protection registrations tend to be sticky in that they keep being renewed. But as a ccTLD for the European Union, the .eu has yet to make any serious inroads at local country levels where each EU country level market is dominated by the ccTLD/.com axis (approximately 80% of the domain footprint for each market.) Over a million German registered .eu domains is impressive but so is over 15 million .de domains.
Hi John –
My business has sold at least 2 .com’s to businesses who no longer brand around the .eu – and at decent sales prices 🙂
But as long as they keep renewing the .eu’s – that is what all these non.com registries are all about – selling domains that will never be used 🙂
I’m not surprised, Brian,
The ccTLD/com axis in most markets means that third choice TLDs like .eu do not have the critical level of brand recognition necessary to make rebranding a success. If you are going global then you use .com for your brand. Most new businesses registering their ccTLD domain will also register the .com at the same time if it is available unless they are completely focused on their local market.
The usage element is another issue that hits .eu hard. While Eurid does come out with an aperiodic “survey” of .eu website usage, it is not exactly accurate in terms of usage classifications and the conclusions are wildly misleading but make for nice PR fluff. People in the EU are aware of .eu but they are more aware of their own ccTLD and .com – that’s unlikely to change.