This year .eu will be celebrating its fifth anniversary. Since becoming available in April 2006, more than 3.3 million .eu domain names have been registered, and this is just the start…
Have you ever thought about your online presence – perhaps on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter? For many individuals and businesses, their online presence begins with a domain name – a unique address directing people to their website or email address. Every domain name has an extension, such as .com, .info or .org, but if you want to express your European identity online, there is only one extension to choose: .eu.
Residents of Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have registered the most .eu domain names. Considering that these three countries are the biggest domain name markets in the EU, perhaps that’s no coincidence. In many other EU countries, .eu ranks as the third largest extension.
Business beyond borders
Why is .eu so popular? European businesses in particular see the appeal of having a .eu domain name as it gives them a simple way to portray a reliable and quality image, values closely associated with .eu. A .eu domain name also allows companies to organise their customer information more efficiently online, as an .eu website simplifies multiple language and national options by reducing the number of websites needed for a single, European location. Seventy-five per cent of businesses with a .eu domain name use it as their prime web address, proving that they see an added value in emphasising the pan-European nature of their operations.
Why we need domain names
Domain names make the internet more user-friendly. Every computer connected to the internet has a unique IP address, consisting of four sets of numbers, for example 195.234.53.199. But when surfing online, remembering a set of numbers for every website would be an impossible task for the human brain, so domain names, such as www.eurid.eu, were introduced to make websites easier to find and remember.
EURid, the .eu custodian
While .eu registrars take care of the registration process, the database of all .eu domain names and the infrastructure required to keep them present on the internet is managed by EURid, a not-for- profit registry. EURid is multicultural, with staff from 24 different countries who provide support to more than 850 accredited .eu registrars in the 23 official EU languages. EURid maintains a technical infrastructure that has been designed to ensure a reliable and secure operation. EURid was one of the first registries to implement DNSSEC, the internet security standard that reassures internet users that they are visiting a real website instead of a fake impostor, thus giving them more confidence when
going online.