EURid, the official registry for Europe Domain Names, issued the new version of its second quarter , revealing a 10% year-over-year increase in .EU web address registrations when compared to Q2 2009. Continue reading ‘Europe Domain Names: Steady 10% Growth for .EU’
Archive for the 'European Union Domains .EU' Category
According to EURid 65 % of domain name registrants chose a registrar from their own country, and only 18 % chose a registrar from a different country of the European Union. Just 17% chose a registrar located outside the EU. Continue reading ‘.EU Registration: 65% of .EU registrants chose a registrar based in their own country’
Your .EU domain name must follow these guidelines:
1) CHARACTER LIMIT
+ Domain name must be at least 2 characters and no more than 63 characters long without the EU category extension (example: in domain XXXX.eu, this limitation relates to the XXXX)
+ The IDN domain names, to be able to be used on the Internet, must be subject to a modification called ACE (ASCII-Compatible Encoding). The maximum length allowed to a IDN domain name is applied at the codified version of ACE, not the original name. In general this means that the numbers of available characters diminish Continue reading ‘What are the syntax rules for .EU domain names?’
The European Domain Registry announced that during the month of July 66.129 .eu domains were added to the .eu registry.
Even though there is still a general slowdown in economic activity, the Registry registered a rise of 15% in new registrations, compared to July 2008.
Moreover, the Registry noted that the 2.92 million .eu registrations at the end of the second quarter represented an annual increase of 3.1%.
Marc Van Wesemael, General Manager of .EU Domain Registry, states about this: We welcome this strong start to the third quarter, which is a reminder of the value of .eu. The number of registrations is dynamic for all registries and changes over time throughout the industry. What doesn’t change is the value of a strong Internet presence.
He also added that “People who register .eu names are keeping them and using them”.
Latest statistics from .EU Domain Registry show the total number of .EU domain names registered briefly passed, and then slipped below the 3 million mark. .EU is the 9th largest TLD and 5th largest ccTLD.
The three millionth .EU domain name was registered on 11 January, 2009. However today there are 2,976,134 .EU domain names registered, which follows a bumper month for registrations in July when 66,129 new .EU names were registered.
A reason for the decline is the launch of .EU was in April 2006, so there is a larger number of renewals and deletions every April.
And while there was a decline in the number of registered names when compared to the fourth quarter 2008, there was a 13.4% increase in registrations when compared to the same period one year ago.
“We welcome this strong start to the third quarter, which is a reminder of the value of .EU”, comments Marc Van Wesemael, .EU Domain Registry General Manager.
But reflecting the global financial crisis, there was a slight decrease in the number of domain names registered per day in quarter one.
Renewal rates stayed strong at an average of 81%, which is somewhat higher than the industry norm. The quarter also saw a sharp drop in trades: only 29,816 .EU domain names out of 2.9 million changed hands, or about one domain name out of 100. That is a significant decrease compared to one year ago, when one in 30 was traded.
“People who register .EU names are keeping them and using them”, notes Mr Van Wesemael.
In number of registrations by country, Germany continues to lead with 930,570 registrations as of the end of quarter one 2009 followed by the Netherlands with 415,641 and the United Kingdom with 352,865.
However when looking at the number of .EU domain names per 1,000 people, Cyprus is the clear leader with 66.2 .EU domain names followed by Luxembourg (55.4), the Netherlands (25.2), Ireland (11.4) and Germany (11.3).
These figures compare to registrations for the country’s ccTLD, which show the Netherlands with the highest penetration rate here with 201.6 .NL registrations per 1,000 people. This is followed by Denmark (.DK/179.4), Germany (.DE/154.6), United Kingdom (.UK/121.1) and Austria (.AT/101.8).
A group seeking the creation of .eco Internet domain to promote environmental awareness has won the backing of former US vice president Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection.
Dot Eco LLC, which has applied to the regulatory Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers for the .eco extension, made the announcement at ICANN’s current meeting in Mexico City.
Dot Eco said it has entered into an “integrated partnership” with Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection to secure the .eco domain.
“We fully support Dot Eco LLC in its efforts to secure the .eco top level domain through the ICANN application process and look forward to working with Dot Eco LLC to promote .eco,” Dot Eco quoted Gore as saying.
“This is a truly exciting opportunity for the environmental movement and for the Internet as a whole.”
Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his campaign against global warming and an Oscar for his green documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” is a co founder of the Alliance for Climate Protection and its current chairman. Dot Eco plans to apply to ICANN for the creation of .eco later this year.
The group said .eco “will be established for individuals to express their support for environmental causes, for companies to promote their environmental initiatives, and for environmental organizations to maintain their websites in a namespace that is more relevant to their core missions.” Proceeds from registration fees would be used to fund research on climate change and other environmentally related areas.
There are now more than 3 million domains under .EU. Even after 3 years, .eu domain has not stopped its growth. It has been named the 5th most popular country code top level domain from the world; the number of .eu domain increased by 2% the first quarter of 2009.
.EU opened on December 2005, but only since April 2006 registration has been open to all EU residents.
Being such a success, Sweden has decided to be the first Member State who chooses .eu for their website dedicated to the Presidency of the European Union.
