.eu - Actual Use - Parking and Redirects

Parking and Redirects

• Many domain registrants use their .eu website as a web portal containing a list of their national websites with national ccTLDs. (example: www.sony.eu)

• Other registrants have registered a .eu domain name to protect the brand name of their main website or domain, and redirect visitors to their pre-existing national ccTLD or .com website. (example: www.champagne.eu)

• 12.8% of .eu websites are parking pages with Pay Per Click advertisements, well below the industry average. ISPs and web hosters will often point unused domains to a parking webpage with PPC advertising.

• 26% of .eu domain names are redirects for existing the national ccTLD or .com websites.

• Domain name speculation, Domain name warehousing and cybersquatting are always features of the launch of any new TLD; however, this was more widespread in the case of the .eu launch, as seen below.

According to page 20 of EURid's Annual Report for 2006, the breakdown of .eu domain ownership figures on 31 December 2006 was:

• Registrants with more than 10,000 domains: 6
• Registrants with 5,000–9,999 domains: 18
• Registrants with 1,000–4,999 domains: 64
• Registrants with 100-999 domains: 1,257
• Registrants with 10–99 domains: 20,886
• Registrants with 6–9 domains: 22,933
• Registrants with 5 domains: 13,200 – (66,000 domains)
• Registrants with 4 domains: 23,007 – (92,028 domains)
• Registrants with 3 domains: 42,887 – (128,661 domains)
• Registrants with 2 domains: 115,543 – (231,086 domains)
• Registrants with 1 domain: 610,679

The number of registrants with five domains or fewer registered in .eu ccTLD was, according to these statistics, 805,316. These registrants accounted for 1,128,454 domains out of 2,444,947 .eu domains registered as of 31 December 2006. These registrations, typically those of individuals and companies protecting their brand, only represent 46% of the number of registered .eu domains.

It had been actively targeted during the Sunrise period by speculators using fast track Benelux trademarks to create prior rights on various high value generic terms and during the landrush by speculators using EU front companies in the UK and Cyprus to register large numbers of domains. While speculative activity occurred with the launch of other domains, it was the scale of the activity that called into question the competence of EURid in protecting the integrity of eu ccTLD.

The number of .eu domain registrations during the year after the landrush 7 April 2006 to 6 April 2007 seems to have peaked at approximately 2.6 million .eu domains. The market adjustment that follows a landrush in any domain name extension ensures that the number of registered domains will fall as many speculative domain registrations that failed to be resold will not be renewed. This is sometimes referred to as the Junk Dump. On the morning of 7 April 2007, the number of active .eu domains stood at 2,590,160 with approximately 15,000 domains having been deleted since 5 April 2007.

Approximately 1.5 million .eu domains were up for renewal in April 2007. The EURid registry software is based on the DNS. be software and domains are physically renewed at the end of the month of their anniversary of registration. This process differs from more sophisticated registries like that of .com TLD and other ccTLDs that operate on a daily basis. As with any post-landrush phase, an extension shrinks as the Junk Dump takes effect.

The extent of the shrinkage of .eu ccTLD is difficult to estimate because EURid does not publish detailed statistics on the number of new domains registered each day. Instead it provides only a single figure for the number of active domains. The number of new registrations are combined with numbers of domains registered. Approximately 250,000 .eu domains were either deleted or moved into quarantine by 30 April 2007. In the intervening years the renewal rate has stabilised to approximately 80%, which is above the industry average.