.eu What is the future of .EU domains?

gprod said:

Guys, let's stop talking politics. Or .EU is strongly connected with it?
I just want to know what do you think - to buy and hold .EU or to stay away?
BTW. The EU will stay. Trust me. I'm political scinetist

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It depends on what part of the EU you are targeting for sales. Germany has people who may pay good money for .EU domain names and there might be some latent demand for brand protection or keywords. In the Irish and UK markets, there's no significant demand. Older EU countries tend to be a bit mixed. In older EU countries, the local ccTLD has become the main engine of growth and this makes it more difficult to sell non-core TLDs like .EU domain names. Some opportunities lie in the 2004 and later accession states where .COM has not been traditionally strong and .EU registrations are on a par, or stronger than, .COM registrations. Domain name prices are linked to the size of the potential markets and the economic situation in those markets.

Regards...jmcc

In UK there is no significant demand even on .com
Except global companies/projects.

Thanks @jmcc
It's pleasure for me to read this threat and your posts here, great advices, great knowledge!

boker said:

So you are quoting a report from 8 years ago and you want us to believe that nothing changed.

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The advent of services like Cloudflare and Amazon AWS is one factor. However, most Irish websites are still Irish hosted and on Irish hosting because the majority of web hosting, and this applies for all web hosting, is on shared hosting rather than dedicated hosting. The .IE has grown from 153,002 in December 2010 to 239,259 domain names today. The growth is concentrated on the top hosters in the Irish market. Like most mature ccTLD markets, the in-country hosters have the greatest share of the market.

You were saying yesterday that in 2017 was around 75%, but you can prove it. I can't find that EURID report because I didn't saved two days ago and I can't find the iedr report talking about 45%, but when I have more time I will look for them.

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Eurid would be fascinated to find that it had claimed 60% usage of its domain names. It didn't. It even published usage reports using its own finite college students methodology that show considerably less than the 60% usage that you claimed.

Regards...jmcc

Jurgen Wolf said:

In UK there is no significant demand even on .com
Except global companies/projects.

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Part of that is due to the size of .UK (10.4 million) and the fact that it is a relatively open ccTLD where anyone can register domain names in .CO.UK. It is also a highly competitive market and has its own dropcatcher services. The registration fee on .UK domain names is low compared to some other ccTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

boker said:

I don't know, I own just a few .eu domains, I don't have any lll.eu

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I can't add anything.

gprod said:

Thanks @jmcc
It's pleasure for me to read this threat and your posts here, great advices, great knowledge!

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I even have some statistics that I made earlier. While I may not concentrate on the enduser sale prices of domain names, I have to watch the major trends in the TLDs.

Eurid has a hard job trying to market the .EU thouughout the European Union. The way that it allowed the ccTLD to be plundered in the Landrush effectively killed the .EU as a .COM competitor and it also killed demand in the English-speaking market. A lot of the warehousers who hoovered up US English and generic English terms in the Landrush found that they could not sell them and large portfolios of .EU were being dumped on the market in 2007 and 2008. What happened as a result of this was that many people in the EU switched their attention to their local ccTLDs. The ccTLD registries began promoting their own ccTLDs heavily in their markets. The other advantage that the ccTLD registries had was that Domain Tasting was effectively keeping the good COM/NET/ORG drops away from the public so the ccTLDs were in a position to fill a lot of the demand for new domain names. It is hard not to feel sorry for Eurid as it was really out of its depth in running what was essentially a generic gTLD rather than a ccTLD.

Regards...jmcc

Just on the Irish market again, this is what it looks like on 01 Febuary 2018:
IE: 237,275
Irish hosted:
COM: 144,088
NET: 11,351
ORG: 8,054
BIZ: 1,521
INFO: 2,374
MOBI: 582
ASIA: 98
New gTLDs: 5,113
UK: 32,698
(443,154)
Q3 Eurid EU: 22,972
Including .EU that's 466,126 domain names in the Irish market.

The .EU only represents 4.93% of the Irish market.

That's approximately 9.68% of the .IE ccTLD by volume. The problem is that as with the UK there are some some front companies that are holding large numbers of .EU domain names for non-EU registrants.

(This is the Q3 Eurid progress report: https://eurid.eu/media/filer_public...fdf-b50e2c45601f/quarterly_report_q3_2017.pdf )

The Q3 EU figure for the UK is 303,564. The .UK count is 10,478,573. In real terms, The UK's .EU footprint is only 2.9% of the .UK ccTLD alone. The UK has approximately 3,810,243 gTLDs on its hosters. The .EU only has approximately 2.08% of the UK domain name market.

The Q3 EU figure for Germany is 1,021,435. Today's .DE count is 16,315,140 . That's 6.26% of the .DE ccTLD in volume. Germany has approximately 8,500,538 gTLD domain names on its hosters. The .EU has approximately 3.95% of the German domain name market.

If you apply the .EU to .ccTLD ratio to the other EU countries, it is possible to see where the best sales opportunities are for selling the domains. The problem is that an English language keyword may not be worth the same in these countries as it would be in .COM TLD. This is why just looking at the total domain name count on a multi-market TLD like .EU has resulted sales not meeting expectations. It isn't a single market for domain names and the actual country level markets are much smaller.

Regards...jmcc

I have a few (all for sale).

StockExchanges
AboutThe
AllAboutThe
CrimeStats
CrueltyFree
EuroCitizens
EuroPoll
Ideologies
OpinionPoll
OpinionPolls
Pleasing
PoliticalParties
PopularOpinion
PopularOpinions

Cruncher said:

What is the future of .EU domains?

Well,there future is probably as bright as the EU itself!

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And maybe as bright as the rest of the world? Reading the news,seems it's the start of global stock plunge.
Think this is been coming a long time....

Don't think .eu isn't used at all.
F.i. radiostation http://www.nostalgie.eu , a north-belgian radiostation (Flanders, where dutch is spoken -same language as in The Netherlands), or the famous flamboyant former greek minister of finance who came by motorcycle to the meetings of the European Council or discussions with the other minister of finances in Brussels (and who was during the peak of Greek Crisis from (very left wing) party Syriza, and is also a famous professor in economics in the UK). See http://www.YanisVaroufakis.eu using this for his blog, and seems busy with a new party Diem25, giving his opinions on Brexit and on where the EUnion has to go to.

Interesting discussion thread.
I was wondering about how .eu has done over time.
The new Namebio stats allow you to do .eu search by year:
2018 (so far) 19 sales, $5408 average price (influenced a lot by last weeks bit.eu sale though)
2017 91 sales, $2922 average price
2016 127 sales, $3781 average price
Within statistical variation I would say approximately constant.
Over entire time in database, there are 3385 sales with $2606 average price.
- non-European Bob

I own augmentedreality . eu. Had some xxx offers for the name

Germany has a vested interest in .eu remember they did away with the German Mark and replaced it with the Euro. People the .eu will be okay but in the long run it will wither just like .asia.

gprod said:

Usually I see lot of offers for good domain names, inc. one word domains with .EU
I was checked the sales on namebio.com - and find that .EU is not so popular, only Sedo and Golem are the marketplaces with reported sales...

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Golem is gone, I sold a domain last year and they completely disappeared without releasing the payment ...

i'm in Italy and i see way more usage of .Eu than .biz, info, co
btw I'm still talking about very small number..

pablohc86 said:

i'm in Italy and i see way more usage of .Eu than .biz, info, co
btw I'm still talking about very small number..

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Italy is only it and nothing else

Apart from country specific domain which is primary, .EU is used as secondary cctld in European Union.

pablohc86 said:

i'm in Italy and i see way more usage of .Eu than .biz, info, co
btw I'm still talking about very small number..

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Yes most businesses in Italy use both .it and .eu

search for "geo-blocking regulation eu". it means products and services from companies in the eu must be available to all customers in the eu. Companies cannot refuse customers based on their place of residence. That's why I think that .EU will grow. The registration costs about € 3 and renews approximately € 5 with the cheapest register. It is worth for small investments. Sorry for my English .

namerav said:

Apart from country specific domain which is primary, .EU is used as secondary cctld in European Union.

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No. .COM is generally he secondary choice in the EU unless you are talking about some of the eastern 2014 Accession states (countries that joined the EU in 2004). The .EU, at a country level, generally only accounts for less than 5% of most EU country domain name markets. The ccTLD/COM axis is typically 80% or more of each county's market.

Regards...jmcc

The entire EU and the .eu extension is doomed

Doomed I say

Doomed !!!!

MapleDots said:

The entire EU and the .eu extension is doomed

Doomed I say

Doomed !!!!

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Excellent Dad's Army reference. I was wondering who'd be the first to spot that.

Seriously though, it isn't. It has become a kind of truckstop TLD where users go before being redirected to the relevant ccTLD or .COM website.

Regards...jmcc

.eu is ok and Ive sold numeric .eu domains aswell.. I never would invest to .ie domains. I still buy dot good coms and I prefer more com than eu but eu>ie obviously..