What You Need to Know about .Eu Domain Names

Websites with extension names of country location are getting popular. This is one way of categorizing websites. .Eu is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the European Union (EU), and organizations and citizens of EU member states. Such domain name registration was initiated on 7 December of 2005.

Trademark owners were able to submit registrations through a Sunrise process. This is something similar to the launch of .info, in an endeavor to prevent cyber squatting and full registration started on April 7, 2006. The TLD is administered by EURid, a consortium comprise of the local ccTLD registry operators of Belgium, Czech Republic, Sweden and Italy. The .eu TLD was approved by ICANN on March 22, 2005 and placed in the Internet root zone by May 2, 2005. Even though the EU is not a country, it is in fact a sui generis intergovernmental and supranational organization; there are instances of issuing top-level domains to other entities. 

The Sunrise Period has two phases. The first phase, which began on December 7, 2005, was to administer applications by registrants with prior rights based on trademarks and geographic names. The second phase began on February 7, 2006 and covered companies, trade names and personal names. In the case of all Sunrise applications, the application must be accompanied by documents proving the claim to ownership of a certain right. The decision was then made by Pricewaterhouse Coopers Belgium, which had been selected as the validation agent by EURid. In the first 15 minutes of registration, there were 27,949 total applications, and after one hour, 71,235 domain registrations. 

The primary users of this domain are websites with pan-European or cross-border purposes and audiences. It is frequently used to emphasize the 'European identity' of a website, as opposed to the website having a strictly national ccTLD or global "dotcom" nature. In most countries of the EU, the national ccTLDs have the most share of the market with the remainder spread over .com or .net or .org or .info or .biz. As a consequence, .Eu has had an uphill battle to achieve a significant share of these national markets. The leading players tend to be the .com domains and national ccTLD. The other TLDs have gradually smaller shares of these national markets. 

A lot of domain registrants use their “dot-eu” website as a web portal containing a list of their national websites with national ccTLDs. Other registrants have registered a .eu domain name to protect the brand name of their primary website or domain, and redirect visitors to their pre-existing national ccTLD or “dot-com” website. Many “dot-eu” websites are simply parking pages with Pay Per Click advertisements. ISPs and web hosts will frequently point unused domains to a parking webpage with PPC advertising.

Many active .eu websites are really aliases for existing the national ccTLD or “dot-com” websites. Domain name speculation, domain name warehousing and cyber squatting are often features of the launch of any new TLD.

An international domain like .eu can be considered the most significant asset. It makes customers feel like they are trading with a well-established company with a European dimension rather than some unknown Internet operator. Furthermore, one vital advantage of .eu domain names is their freshness. A lot of .eu domains are still available. They can be registered in a simple and convenient way by one of the over 1,000 accredited local registrars in all EU countries.