IT.COM

.eu What is the future of .EU domains?

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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...

What's the problem with this gTLD?

I see people said:
- Google doesn't like .EU's;
- European Union is not a country - there everyone speaks his own language;
- It's hard to register .EU domain because it's needs EU addres...

What is your opinion?
Do you have .EU in your portfolio?
Do you have a kinf of sales with .EU?
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
It is not a gTLD. It is a ccTLD with no country. It is run by a registry that should not have been given the contract to run it and its supporting legislation and regulations were crafted by people ignorant of the domain name business. It never really recovered from being over-speculated during the landrush by people outside the EU and the registry tried to lie its way out of that mess. It never recovered.

Approximately 75% of Irish and UK companies/businesses did not get their .EU domains when they applied due to a pondscum intellect designed "scheme". That and the massive speculation by non-EU warehousers, often using dodgy Benelux "trademarks" to game the Sunrise restrictions and domainers killed the ccTLD in the English speaking market. It isn't a ccTLD where there's natural development and usage and most of the registrations are for brand protection purposes rather than use. Some eastern EU countries like it more than .COM but it is considered a junk TLD in other EU countries where it only represents less than 5% of the domain name footprints of those countries (actually closer to around 1% in some). There's approximately 27 languages in the EU so it is not a single language areas and typical English language keyword domains are not worth as much as they would be in .COM TLD.

Regards...jmcc
 
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As a rule, Europeans prefer their local extensions. International companies that operate across Europe will register every ccTLD they need, and produce localized versions of their websites as appropriate.
The TLD is not very much relevant or useful because there is little pan-European sentiment.
The EU has 27 member countries and nearly as many national languages so it's not an homogeneous, well defined market. The EU is perceived as a remote and unpopular entity, thus the .eu TLD just doesn't convey the kind of proximity and good faith that the local extension will.
 
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It is not a gTLD. It is a ccTLD with no country. It is run by a registry that should not have been given the contract to run it and its supporting legislation and regulations were crafted by people ignorant of the domain name business. It never really recovered from being over-speculated during the landrush by people outside the EU and the registry tried to lie its way out of that mess. It never recovered.

Approximately 75% of Irish and UK companies/businesses did not get their .EU domains when they applied due to a pondscum intellect designed "scheme". That and the massive speculation by non-EU warehousers, often using dodgy Benelux "trademarks" to game the Sunrise restrictions and domainers killed the ccTLD in the English speaking market. It isn't a ccTLD where there's natural development and usage and most of the registrations are for brand protection purposes rather than use. Some eastern EU countries like it more than .COM but it is considered a junk TLD in other EU countries where it only represents less than 5% of the domain name footprints of those countries (actually closer to around 1% in some). There's approximately 27 languages in the EU so it is not a single language areas and typical English language keyword domains are not worth as much as they would be in .COM TLD.

Regards...jmcc
Which of these countries do you name as 'easterns'? Also, if you check the statistics, over 60% of .eu domains are used, over 20% are redirects and around 12% are parked, so not really just brand protection.
Also, with over 3 million registrations, is in top 10 extensions. It's not what it should have been, but it's not useless.
doteu1_12757.jpg
 
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Which of these countries do you name as 'easterns'? Also, if you check the statistics, over 60% of .eu domains are used, over 20% are redirects and around 12% are parked, so not really just brand protection.
No. :) Eurid's "statistics" on usage are not accurate and its "methodology" is not robust or reliable. The last "survey" I remember reading was a tiny survey of 5,000 domain names categorised by college students. I, on the other hand, ran a somewhat larger multi-million domain name survey on .EU ccTLD. Poland is an Eastern EU country as is the Czech republic. Basically the Eastern EU countries are the 2004 accession states and more recent additions.

This is from a recent statistical survey:
Active: 14.07%
Brand Protection: 2.71%
Clone (Other TLD site): 0.62%
In page redirect: 0.97%
External TLD Redirect: 10.62%
Forbidden/Not Found: 3.11%
Holding Pages: 20.83%
Internal site redirect: 2.61%
No HTML: 1.66%
Affiliate Lander: 0.03%
External TLD Redirect (brand): 9.0%
Duplicate content (2): 0.3%
Duplicate content(>2): 0.19%
PPC: 4.12%
Other redirect: 1.38%
Sale: 2.95%
HTTPS redirect: 1.83%
Unavailable/site error: 1.02%
Adult Aff lander: 0.01%
Social Media lander: 0.7%
In-zone redirect: 4.31%

Also, with over 3 million registrations, is in top 10 extensions. It's not what it should have been, but it's not useless.
It was intended to be a replacement for the .COM in the European Union market. It failed because of poor legislation, poor rules, poor marketing and poor management. Zone file counts mean very little these days. Now to people who don't know how TLDs are used, 3M might seem to be a lot but when these figures are broken down over the component EU country markets, they represent less than 5% of the domain name footprints in each of those countries. As a .COM alternative, it should have been in the region of 15 to 30 million registrations. A significant number of UK .EU registrations are from cyberwarehousing holding companies that are owned by non-EU businesses. The .UK ccTLD has approximately 10.4 million registrations so that does put that 307K registrations into some perspective and it also has at least 3.8M gTLD registrations. With the Irish market, there are approximately 22K .EU registrations. There are approximately 237K .IE domain names registered and 168K COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO domain names on Irish hosters. There's also about 5K NGT domain names and 33K .UK domain names in the Irish market. The Spanish and Swedish .EU counts have been stagnant for years. The German .EU count is in decline and has been for a few years now. The Austrian .EU count is high due to a drop catcher operation. It bounced between Austria and Gibraltar in 2016 and then back again in 2017.

Regards...jmcc
 
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No. :) Eurid's "statistics" on usage are not accurate and its "methodology" is not robust or reliable. The last "survey" I remember reading was a tiny survey of 5,000 domain names categorised by college students. I, on the other hand, ran a somewhat larger multi-million domain name survey on .EU ccTLD. Poland is an Eastern EU country as is the Czech republic. Basically the Eastern EU countries are the 2004 accession states and more recent additions.

This is from a recent statistical survey:
Active: 14.07%
Brand Protection: 2.71%
Clone (Other TLD site): 0.62%
In page redirect: 0.97%
External TLD Redirect: 10.62%
Forbidden/Not Found: 3.11%
Holding Pages: 20.83%
Internal site redirect: 2.61%
No HTML: 1.66%
Affiliate Lander: 0.03%
External TLD Redirect (brand): 9.0%
Duplicate content (2): 0.3%
Duplicate content(>2): 0.19%
PPC: 4.12%
Other redirect: 1.38%
Sale: 2.95%
HTTPS redirect: 1.83%
Unavailable/site error: 1.02%
Adult Aff lander: 0.01%
Social Media lander: 0.7%
In-zone redirect: 4.31%

It was intended to be a replacement for the .COM in the European Union market. It failed because of poor legislation, poor rules, poor marketing and poor management. Zone file counts mean very little these days. Now to people who don't know how TLDs are used, 3M might seem to be a lot but when these figures are broken down over the component EU country markets, they represent less than 5% of the domain name footprints in each of those countries. As a .COM alternative, it should have been in the region of 15 to 30 million registrations. A significant number of UK .EU registrations are from cyberwarehousing holding companies that are owned by non-EU businesses. The .UK ccTLD has approximately 10.4 million registrations so that does put that 307K registrations into some perspective and it also has at least 3.8M gTLD registrations. With the Irish market, there are approximately 22K .EU registrations. There are approximately 237K .IE domain names registered and 168K COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO domain names on Irish hosters. There's also about 5K NGT domain names and 33K .UK domain names in the Irish market. The Spanish and Swedish .EU counts have been stagnant for years. The German .EU count is in decline and has been for a few years now. The Austrian .EU count is high due to a drop catcher operation. It bounced between Austria and Gibraltar in 2016 and then back again in 2017.

Regards...jmcc
I would like to know what map did you used to put Czech republic in eastern Europe? If it's so, than Austria should be there as well. Doesn't have anything to do with the idea that it was part of the communist countries, Berlin was in that block as well, and you don't say that Germany is part of the eastern Europe. Also, the .eu registrations in Czech republic and Poland are around 470k, so around 7-8% of the total .eu registrations, but you don't say anything about the 2.7 million .eu domains registered by Germany, France, Nederland and the other western countries.
So, you want to make me believe that eurid's statistics are not accurate, even do they are done by the same guys who are doing the statistics in all EU, but your statistics are accurate, even do you don't name the source, you don't name the organization who made them? Doesn't sound right, no? I don't know why, but I'm sure that your statistics are coming from UK and they are well intended always. Also, even if you don't believe eurid's statistics, they also say that .eu is used more often than .com in 90% of EU countries, probably the only country were is not happening is UK. I live in Ireland from 2009, I have a website using .eu with traffic from coming mostly Ireland, UK, Nederland and Germany and you are trying to tell me how it should be, using some no name statistics.
UK was always against EU and everything that was related to EU and you guys were never happy inside EU, you have used EU just to help your economy in the 70's, but with this Brexit maybe you will be happier and everybody can mind their business afterwards.
 
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I would like to know what map did you used to put Czech republic in eastern Europe?
It was one of the 2004 accession states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_European_Union

Also, the .eu registrations in Czech republic and Poland are around 470k, so around 7-8% of the total .eu registrations, but you don't say anything about the 2.7 million .eu domains registered by Germany, France, Nederland and the other western countries.
The .EU ccTLD is quite stagnant in the old EU countries. The bulk of the registrations are old, brand protection registrations. That's why Eurid has high renewal rates (>75%). But in terms of new registrations in some of those old EU countries, the numbers of registered .EU domain names is declining. The Czech and Polish .EU registrations would represent approximately 12% or so of the .EU ccTLD. (The current count is approximately 3.8M.)

So, you want to make me believe that eurid's statistics are not accurate, even do they are done by the same guys who are doing the statistics in all EU, but your statistics are accurate, even do you don't name the source, you don't name the organization who made them?
Perhaps you were not reading closely. I said that Eurid's usage "statistics" are not accurate. That 60% active figure is rubbish. Eurostat does not do Eurid's usage statistics. Eurid's usage statistics were based on a tiny 5K domain "survey" with college students doing the categorisation. Eurostat publishes statistics for the EU. Eurostat is not Eurid.

Doesn't sound right, no? I don't know why, but I'm sure that your statistics are coming from UK and they are well intended always.
My statistics are coming from the UK? No. I just happen to track the UK ccTLD among other TLDs (COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO and about 1,230 other TLDs). I did run a survey on .UK web usage at the same time I ran the last .EU survey.

Also, even if you don't believe eurid's statistics, they also say that .eu is used more often than .com in 90% of EU countries, probably the only country were is not happening is UK.
Absolute rubbish. :) there are more active .COM websites in the Irish market than there are Irish registered .EU domain names. The same goes for most of the other EU countries. The .COM was the main TLD throughout the EU for decades until the ccTLDs began to take over the markets in the mid 2000s. Most countries in the EU are now ccTLD positive in that their markets are dominated by the local ccTLDs. The .EU ccTLD only launched in 2005. I haven't seen Eurid make a claim that .EU is used more often than .COM in 90% of EU countries.

The .COM is still the main legacy TLD throughout the EU and it its usage figures in EU countries is still far higher than .EU ccTLD. The main market axis in most countries is 80% .ccTLD/COM. That's 80% of the registrations in these markets.

I live in Ireland from 2009, I have a website using .eu with traffic from coming mostly Ireland, UK, Nederland and Germany and you are trying to tell me how it should be, using some no name statistics.
I know the Irish market better than you ever will. Actually, I probably know the statistics of most countries better than most people because I have to publish gTLD counts for countries each month. There are more .IE and .COM websites in the Irish market than there are .EU websites. There are more .NET websites than there are Irish .EU sites in the Irish market. There are more .UK registrations in the Irish market than .EU registrations. The UK is seen as a natural market for Irish businesses and many Irish businesses register their .CO.UK domain name if it is available and that's before the Northern Ireland situation is taken into account.

UK was always against EU and everything that was related to EU and you guys were never happy inside EU, you have used EU just to help your economy in the 70's, but with this Brexit maybe you will be happier and everybody can mind their business afterwards.
So you lived in Ireland from 2009 and that makes you an expert on the Irish market as well as the UK? :) Have you learned to tell Irish people from British people yet?

Regards...jmcc
 
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I strongly appreciate the strength of discussion between you 'Boker' and 'Jmcc' but you following quote of usage had me nearly falling off my chair

Also, if you check the statistics, over 60% of .eu domains are used, over 20% are redirects and around 12% are parked, so not really just brand protection.

I don't invest in .EU, maybe as you say Boker, It's because I'm a Brit. but any source reporting usage as you've quoted is just Wrong
 
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It was one of the 2004 accession states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_European_Union

The .EU ccTLD is quite stagnant in the old EU countries. The bulk of the registrations are old, brand protection registrations. That's why Eurid has high renewal rates (>75%). But in terms of new registrations in some of those old EU countries, the numbers of registered .EU domain names is declining.

Perhaps you were not reading closely. I said that Eurid's usage "statistics" are not accurate. That 60% active figure is rubbish. Eurostat does not do Eurid's usage statistics. Eurid's usage statistics were based on a tiny 5K domain "survey" with college students doing the categorisation. Eurostat publishes statistics for the EU. Eurostat is not Eurid.

My statistics are coming from the UK? No. I just happen to track the UK ccTLD among other TLDs (COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO and about 1,230 other TLDs). I did run a survey on .UK web usage at the same time I ran the last .EU survey.

Absolute rubbish. :) there are more active .COM websites in the Irish market than there are Irish registered .EU domain names. The same goes for most of the other EU countries. The .COM was the main TLD throughout the EU for decades until the ccTLDs began to take over the markets in the mid 2000s. Most countries in the EU are now ccTLD positive in that their markets are dominated by the local ccTLDs. The .EU ccTLD only launched in 2005. I haven't seen Eurid make a claim that .EU is used more often than .COM in 90% of EU countries.

The .COM is still the main legacy TLD throughout the EU and it its usage figures in EU countries is still far higher than .EU ccTLD. The main market axis in most countries is 80% .ccTLD/COM. That's 80% of the registrations in these markets.

I know the Irish market better than you ever will. Actually, I probably know the statistics of most countries better than most people because I have to publish gTLD counts for countries each month. There are more .IE and .COM websites in the Irish market than there are .EU websites. There are more .NET websites than there are Irish .EU sites in the Irish market. There are more .UK registrations in the Irish market than .EU registrations. The UK is seen as a natural market for Irish businesses and many Irish businesses register their .CO.UK domain name if it is available and that's before the Northern Ireland situation is taken into account.

So you lived in Ireland from 2009 and that makes you an expert on the Irish market as well as the UK? :) Have you learned to tell Irish people from British people yet?

Regards...jmcc
No, it does not make me an expert, but between you an me, probably I'm the only one with real commercial experience regarding irish market, I probably own more websites geared toward irish market than you have ever visited Ireland. Also, I'm dealing with a lot of online and offline shops from all over EU, so I can say for sure that I know more than others about what it used and what not.
Please show me an official statistic with .com usage in EU and where it shows that .eu is less used. I have attached a link with an official statistics in another thread, saying exactly the other way, I can't find the thread right now, but I will attached it when I will find it.
You were saying the same things here: https://www.namepros.com/threads/ar...price-and-growth.1043603/page-10#post-6399709 , without quoting any official statistics, just your own.
Regarding the wikipedia link, it does talk about Malta, Cyprus and other countries as well, so they are from eastern Europe as well? Hopefully your statistics are more accurate than your geography knowledge. Please check the map and let me know why do you think that Czech Republic is part os eastern Europe and Austria is not.
 
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I strongly appreciate the strength of discussion between you 'Boker' and 'Jmcc' but you following quote of usage had me nearly falling off my chair



I don't invest in .EU, maybe as you say Boker, It's because I'm a Brit. but any source reporting usage as you've quoted is just Wrong
Off course they are wrong, they are done by EURID, appointed by European Commission and they are recognized at Brussels as the official statistics, but they are not good for namepros or our UK members. Probably as a Brit, you don't like these statistics, but you are free to believe whatever you want, doesn't have to be true what you believe.
 
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No, it does not make me an expert, but between you an me, probably I'm the only one with real commercial experience regarding irish market, I probably own more websites geared toward irish market than you have ever visited Ireland.
How many .IE domain names do you own? The only high profile .EU ccTLD websites seen in the Irish market are just official EU ones. Most Irish websites are either .IE ccTLD or .COM TLD sites. There are even a few .IRISH websites as that's the most popular NGT in the Irish market at the moment with .CLUB as the second most popular.

Please show me an official statistic with .com usage in EU and where it shows that .eu is less used.
The .EU ccTLD is not a core TLD in most EU countries. The core TLDs in most EU countries is .ccTLD/COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO and the adjacent country ccTLDs. (.UK for Ireland, .NL and .FR for Belgium, .DE for Austria.) Centr has been trying to guess the number of .COM/gTLD domain names in the EU market but they've been relying on Zooknic estimates and the methodology used for those estimates doesn't work well because of the low number of ICANN registrars in the European market as opposed to the US market.

I have attached a link with an official statistics in another thread, saying exactly the other way, I can't find the thread right now, but I will attached it when I will find it.
You were saying the same things here: https://www.namepros.com/threads/ar...price-and-growth.1043603/page-10#post-6399709 , without quoting any official statistics, just your own.
That was dealing with the .US ccTLD and how the .COM is the de facto country code TLD for the USA. That still applies. The .US ccTLD is approximately 2 million domain names. The number of US hosted .COM and gTLD domain names is in the region of 96 million domain names. The .US has been poorly marketed for years and has been unable to complete with the .COM in the US market.

Regarding the wikipedia link, it does talk about Malta, Cyprus and other countries as well, so they are from eastern Europe as well? Hopefully your statistics are more accurate than your geography knowledge.
Ireland's in the West. (West of the Greenwich Meridian.)

Please check the map and let me know why do you think that Czech Republic is part os eastern Europe and Austria is not.
The Eastern EU countries generally refers to the countries that joined the EU after 2004. If you ask anyone in Ireland to name an Eastern EU country, they'll probably name Poland rather than Germany.

Regards...jmcc
 
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Off course they are wrong, they are done by EURID, appointed by European Commission and they are recognized at Brussels as the official statistics, but they are not good for namepros or our UK members.
The Eurid usage "statistics" are not recognised by the European Commission. I just checked back on the Eurid usage %s and they don't make any claim of 60% usage in the 5,000 domain name surveys. Then again, Eurostat is not Eurid and the only thing that Eurid supplies to the EC is a bi-annual statement and the numbers of registered domain names.

Regards...jmcc
 
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The Eurid usage "statistics" are not recognised by the European Commission. I just checked back on the Eurid usage %s and they don't make any claim of 60% usage in the 5,000 domain name surveys. Then again, Eurostat is not Eurid and the only thing that Eurid supplies to the EC is a bi-annual statement and the numbers of registered domain names.

Regards...jmcc
It is recognized, check the official web page of EURID and European Commission, check the official EU press releases: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-48_en.htm?locale=en quoting EURID, check even the statistic provided by me to see the European Commission emblem.
 
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It is recognized, check the official web page of EURID and European Commission, check the official EU press releases: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-48_en.htm?locale=en quoting EURID, check even the statistic provided by me to see the European Commission emblem.
Just a press release with no actual usage percentages. It is a lot of waffle designed to impress the gullible (Like most press releases from Brussels they are intended to make the EU look good.) but the .EU only had 11.45% active websites in 2008. (January 2008 survey) It was already dead in the Irish and UK market. Do you undestand the difference between web usage statistics for a TLD and the domain name count for a TLD?

Regards...jmcc
 
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How many .IE domain names do you own? The only high profile .EU ccTLD websites seen in the Irish market are just official EU ones. Most Irish websites are either .IE ccTLD or .COM TLD sites. There are even a few .IRISH websites as that's the most popular NGT in the Irish market at the moment with .CLUB as the second most popular.

The .EU ccTLD is not a core TLD in most EU countries. The core TLDs in most EU countries is .ccTLD/COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO and the adjacent country ccTLDs. (.UK for Ireland, .NL and .FR for Belgium, .DE for Austria.) Centr has been trying to guess the number of .COM/gTLD domain names in the EU market but they've been relying on Zooknic estimates and the methodology used for those estimates doesn't work well because of the low number of ICANN registrars in the European market as opposed to the US market.

That was dealing with the .US ccTLD and how the .COM is the de facto country code TLD for the USA. That still applies. The .US ccTLD is approximately 2 million domain names. The number of US hosted .COM and gTLD domain names is in the region of 96 million domain names. The .US has been poorly marketed for years and has been unable to complete with the .COM in the US market.

Ireland's in the West. (West of the Greenwich Meridian.)

The Eastern EU countries generally refers to the countries that joined the EU after 2004. If you ask anyone in Ireland to name an Eastern EU country, they'll probably name Poland rather than Germany.

Regards...jmcc
So, according to you, saying that just what's west of Greenwich Meridian is in west, than 90% of France, all Germany, Belgium, Nederlands, Italy are eastern countries, no? Something is wrong here, I will let you discover yourself what's wrong.

I don't know any .irish websites of a company, but do point out a few if you know. I never said that .eu is the core tld in Europe, but I've posted a link a few months ago which was saying that the cctld's were used by 80% of the companies in Europe( we are talking abut real usage not redirects), and .com was under 5% on average, excluding UK and .eu was over .com, the rest of the, being ngtld's, org. and others.

As regarding asking somebody in Ireland to name an eastern country, I can bet that most can't name all EU countries as well. In 2016 I was in Switzerland for a couple of months and I was saying some stories to a friend of mine, Kate, who was in the last year at Trinity College and she was asking where is Switzerland....when I've asked here how it's possible that she doesn't know where is Switzerland, she said that irish schools don't count to much on general knowledge, they are centred on one main course. So, it will not prove anything asking random peoples on the street.
 
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So, according to you, saying that just what's west of Greenwich Meridian is in west, than 90% of France, all Germany, Belgium, Nederlands, Italy are eastern countries, no? Something is wrong here, I will let you discover yourself what's wrong.
As I said, if you ask an Irish person to name an Eastern EU country, the chances are that they will name Poland rather than Germany. The older EU countries are not generally considered to be Eastern European countries by Irish people.

I don't know any irish websites, but do point out a few if you know. I never said that .eu is the core tld in Europe, but I've posted a link a few months ago which was saying that the cctld's were used by 80% of the companies in Europe( we are talking abut real usage not redirects), and .com was under 5% on average, excluding UK and .eu was over .com, the rest of the, being ngtld's, org. and others.
I know tens of thousands of Irish websites and have even visited some of them more than once. There are serious problems with claims that 5% of companies use .COM in the EU and you either misunderstood or the press release was not based on reality. The .EU ccTLD is a pseudo-ccTLD. The majority of websites in Europe are on real ccTLD websites. The .EU is only a ccTLD in name. (Odd that you don't know any Irish websites if you've been living in Ireland since 2009.)

The most commonly used websites in Ireland would be Facebook.com, Twitter.com, (and other Social Media sites), Google.ie, Rte.ie, Independent.ie, Irishtimes.com and the Irish bank websites. That's just from memory.


The .EU ccTLD is rarely used as a primary brand website. It is use to redirect visitors to the relevant ccTLD website. As for the .COM TLD, there are tens of millions of .COM domain names registered in the EU. It is the second most popular TLD in most EU countries. The highest numbers of redirects in most EU countries to the local ccTLD is from the registrant's .COM domain name. The highest numbers of redirects in most EU ccTLDs are outbound redirects from the local ccTLD to .COM websites.

As regarding asking somebody in Ireland to name an eastern country, I can bet that most can't name all EU countries as well.
I don't think that Irish people are brainwashed about the EU. Most could if they were bothered.

In 2016 I was in Switzerland for a couple of months and I was saying some stories to a friend of mine, Kate, who was in the last year at Trinity College and she was asking were is Switzerland....when I've asked here how it's possible that she doesn't know where is Switzerland, she said that irish schools don't count to much on general knowledge, they are centred on one main course. So, it will not prove anything asking random peoples on the street.
Right. So your fictional friend was in Trinity College in Dublin asking where Switzerland was? The alternative is that the Samuel Beckett quote about Trinity was particularly apt (the cream of Irish society - rich and thick). As for the "one main course", that's rubbish. Member states of the EU is not general knowledge. It is Geography and would be learned in primary school.

Regards...jmcc
 
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@boker you have to understand that @jmcc has been doing that research for a long time, it is not partisan. Just an inconvenient truth :)
Also, you said that with over 3 million registrations, .eu should be in the top 10.
First of all the stats is one thing, but many extensions are inflated these days. The actual usage is not in proportion to the number of registrations.

If you just look at the figures (about 3.8M today) you might think it's big and therefore a popular TLD. But the reality is that it's stagnating. The figure was around 3.7M 4 years ago...
So the net gain is a mere 100K registrations in 4 years, which is very little for a TLD that is open to registrants of about 30 countries (EU/EAA). Like what, a huge market of 500 million eligible people ?
Reality: European ccTLDs perform better individually. If you consider a ccTLD like .pl or .cz (not even talking about the bigger extensions like .fr/.de/.uk) they achieve the same kind of growth on their own.

There is no surprise here: local extensions prevail.
It is evident that Europeans are not embracing .eu. It is not just a British thing.
If you ask me what is the added value of this TLD, I don't know. Yet I am moderately pro-EU.
 
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As I said, if you ask an Irish person to name an Eastern EU country, the chances are that they will name Poland rather than Germany. The older EU countries are not generally considered to be Eastern European countries by Irish people.

I know tens of thousands of Irish websites and have even visited some of them more than once. There are serious problems with claims that 5% of companies use .COM in the EU and you either misunderstood or the press release was not based on reality. The .EU ccTLD is a pseudo-ccTLD. The majority of websites in Europe are on real ccTLD websites. The .EU is only a ccTLD in name. (Odd that you don't know any Irish websites if you've been living in Ireland since 2009.)

The most commonly used websites in Ireland would be Facebook.com, Twitter.com, (and other Social Media sites), Google.ie, Rte.ie, Independent.ie, Irishtimes.com and the Irish bank websites. That's just from memory.


The .EU ccTLD is rarely used as a primary brand website. It is use to redirect visitors to the relevant ccTLD website. As for the .COM TLD, there are tens of millions of .COM domain names registered in the EU. It is the second most popular TLD in most EU countries. The highest numbers of redirects in most EU countries to the local ccTLD is from the registrant's .COM domain name. The highest numbers of redirects in most EU ccTLDs are outbound redirects from the local ccTLD to .COM websites.

I don't think that Irish people are brainwashed about the EU. Most could if they were bothered.

Right. So your fictional friend was in Trinity College in Dublin asking where Switzerland was? The alternative is that the Samuel Beckett quote about Trinity was particularly apt (the cream of Irish society - rich and thick). As for the "one main course", that's rubbish. Member states of the EU is not general knowledge. It is Geography and would be learned in primary school.

Regards...jmcc
Ok, so we can count on Samuel Beckett and nobody else has to do anything else. Some quotes from government: 'At primary level, the 4% of teaching time set aside for natural sciences (including general science, but also technology in Ireland) is the joint-lowest in Europe.' or 'the 12% of primary teaching time allocated to reading, writing and literature (in English, or in Irish in gaelscoils) is almost the lowest when compared with dozens of other developed countries.' It's not a big deal, some teaching systems are trying to push you to be better at only one subject and other teaching systems are trying to tech you a little bit of everything, nobody can say for sure which is better, the idea is that in my opinion irish students are better at a certain subject, but lack the general knowledge, it's not something bad, it's just different.
I can tell you for sure that most irish guys on the street , they don't have any idea about general issues, I'm not saying it's something bad, it's just how it is.
 
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@boker you have to understand that @jmcc has been doing that research for a long time, it is not partisan. Just an inconvenient truth :)
Also, you said that with over 3 million registrations, .eu should be in the top 10.
First of all the stats is one thing, but many extensions are inflated these days. The actual usage is not in proportion to the number of registrations.

If you just look at the figures (about 3.8M today) you might think it's big and therefore a popular TLD. But the reality is that it's stagnating. The figure was around 3.7M 4 years ago...
So the net gain is a mere 100K registrations in 4 years, which is very little for a TLD that is open to registrants of about 30 countries (EU/EAA). Like what, a huge market of 500 million eligible people ?
Reality: European ccTLDs perform better individually. If you consider a ccTLD like .pl or .cz (not even talking about the bigger extensions like .fr/.de/.uk) they achieve the same kind of growth on their own.

There is no surprise here: local extensions prevail.
It is evident that Europeans are not embracing .eu. It is not just a British thing.
If you ask me what is the added value of this TLD, I don't know. Yet I am moderately pro-EU.
Not being partisan means that you should trust the official statistics and not say that your's are more accurate. I've noticed that he's dealing with statistics, but to say that the official one's are wrong and yours are the right one's is just wrong. The official statistics are not saying that all of the 3 million of them are used, but that over 60% of them are used, if you can prove that the official data is wrong you should prove otherwise, not just say that 'my statistics are the right one's'
Also, everybody is trying to prove that .com is used in Europe because there are millions of .com registrations in Europe, but the reality is other. I have also hundreds of .com and I'm living in Europe, but not using any of them for a real business. The actual usage of .com for real businesses, not counting any parking, redirects or anything else is under 5%, on average, excluding UK. I would like to see if somebody has any data that will show how many companies in Europe are using .com, with the other cctls, gtlds and .eu redirected to .com, I can bet there are less than 1%, most of the time they are using cctld with .com just redirected to cctld, so just defensive registration, not actual usage.
 
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If you just look at the figures (about 3.8M today) you might think it's big and therefore a popular TLD. But the reality is that it's stagnating. The figure was around 3.7M 4 years ago...
So the net gain is a mere 100K registrations in 4 years, which is very little for a TLD that is open to registrants of about 30 countries (EU/EAA). Like what, a huge market of 500 million eligible people ?
Reality: European ccTLDs perform better individually. If you consider a ccTLD like .pl or .cz (not even talking about the bigger extensions like .fr/.de/.uk) they achieve the same kind of growth on their own.
If you look at the renewal rates for a TLD that has plateaued/stagnated and the renewal rates are around 80%, it is a classic brand protection registration TLD.

Most of the registries only publish a blended renewal rate for one year registrations and veteran/older registrations. The reality is that the one year renewals on some of the legacy gTLDs are below 60% for .COM (approx 56% for 2016 registrations in .COM) and lower for the non-core gTLDs like .INFO and .BIZ. Depending on the ccTLD, the renewal rates are upwards of 70% and they are still growing so there is a shift in growth away from the gTLDs to the ccTLDs in most EU countries. That makes the .EU ccTLD an odd ccTLD. But looking at the per country statistics shows that it is beginning to shrink in some countries. The big problem is that it has depended in the German market as its main engine for growth but the German .EU count has been falling for a few years now.

This is what the one year renewal estimates (January 2016 to October 2016) look like for the legacy gTLDs:
COM: 56.81%
NET: 52.98%
ORG: 60.16%
BIZ: 32.77%
INFO: 31.63%
MOBI: 28.13%
ASIA: 38.84%
(AMBIONIC total 55.07%)

Some of this was due to the Chinese Bubble registrations washing out of the zones but a few of the NGTs are below 10% on one year renewals.

Regards...jmcc
 
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Not being partisan means that you should trust the official statistics and not say that your's are more accurate. I've noticed that he's dealing with statistics, but to say that the official one's are wrong and yours are the right one's is just wrong. The official statistics are not saying that all of the 3 million of them are used, but that over 60% of them are used, if you can prove that the official data is wrong you should prove otherwise, not just say that 'my statistics are the right one's'
The "offical" usage statistics from Eurid make no such claim about 60% usage. I've checked. And Eurid's "methodology" on its 5,000 domain name survey is considered to be completely unreliable by professionals. You have probably misunderstood web usage percentages and are confusing e-commerce percentages with active websites. The number of e-commerce websites in a TLD is always going to be lower than the number of active websites.

Regards...jmcc
 
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I don't know about statistics but .eu is well known in several eu countries I've been (where I have checked) . In the EU countries this cctld can be used as a secondary option if the specific cctld is taken
 
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I don't know about statistics but .eu is well known in several eu countries I've been. In the EU countries this cctld can be used as a secondary option if the specific cctld is taken
People may recognise it but in EU countries, it is expected that a site targeting users in the country uses the local ccTLD. If someone is using .EU for a website, the website is rarely considered local.

Regards...jmcc
 
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People may recognise it but in EU countries, it is expected that a site targeting users in the country uses the local ccTLD. If someone is using .EU for a website, the website is rarely considered local.

Regards...jmcc

Still not sure about the "rarely" one.
I see these things live.
 
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People may recognise it but in EU countries, it is expected that a site targeting users in the country uses the local ccTLD. If someone is using .EU for a website, the website is rarely considered local.

Regards...jmcc
This is the idea, if you target just one country in Europe, you are using the cctld, if you target 3-4 neighbour countries than most of the local companies will use .eu and if you have mostly an international presence and most of the sales are made in other corners of the world, than you use .com( but that's the case of under 5% of the EU companies).
 
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