.eu has 3.4 million registrations. TechCrunch calls it a failure.
Is .eu a success or failure?
The country code domain name representing a whole bunch of countries has 3.4 million registrations after five years. That’s pretty darn good compared to most recent domain name launches.
But Robin Wauters of TechCrunch calls it a failure in a post today “3.4 million .eu domain names registered in five years – I call dismal failure“.
I think he’s right.
Wauters points to a bunch of numbers.
Half of .eu registrations were in the first month of launch, meaning it took five years to add another 1.7 million domain registrations. (And a lot of those initial registrations were part of a bogus trademark and local presence game.) Even at 3.4 million domains that’s about 1.4% of all domains registered. A “mere blip”, Wauters calls it.
Now that blip may be a nice business for EURid. But is .eu really successful?
Wauters points out the actual usage of the domain, which I think is the real story. He lives in the EU and makes this observation:
How many companies do you know that actively advertise their .eu domain name rather than the .com or the local country domain? How many times have you thought of a good domain name and immediately thought to yourself: I need to get the .eu domain name, pronto.
Amen.
In a press release about .eu’s growth, EURid points out that .eu registrations are growing at a faster pace than ccTLD registrations in a number of countries. For example, .eu registrations grew 264% in Czech Republic over the past five years while .cz registrations increased 207%.
But here’s the thing: everyone in Czech Republic uses .cz. Not .eu. When I visited last year I saw 99% .cz, a few .coms, and maybe one or two .eu domain names.
That’s not a success in my book. A successful business for .eu, but not a successful domain name.
Elephants are People Too says
.eu suffers from “domain extension failure syndrome”.
.aero, .museum , .travel, .asia all suffer from this affilction.
DOA
.
Steve M says
But just wait. Once all the coming junk extensions launch and have been around for a few years … .eu will seem like a great success.
YUI says
No one really says “I’m European” and that’s the bottom line. Americans have the .com so .us is weak too
Philip says
The E.U. are Nation States with very different old cultures. eu does not cut it.
M. Menius says
Perhaps equally significant with total registrations is actual use, i.e. developed websites launched by companies in operation vs. parked pages only.
Daniel Dryzek says
.eu is a good alternative to ccTLDs and for sure it is even better alternative to .com in Europe. Look how many .eu sales are there on Sedo. This is one of the mostly traded TLD. I think .eu is a success and it has quite bright future. BUT the less domainers believe in this extension, the better for the .eu 🙂
John McCormac says
This year’s anniversary Landrush anniversary drop figures look interesting. The .eu has lost 57K domains since 01 April 2011. There’s about a month’s new registrations and the effects of a buy one, get a second year’s registration free which might have increased registrations. However this is a higher drop figure than previous years. And one of the most signficant drops is that for Cyprus. It has gone from 53,368 domains on 01 April 2011 to 25,660 today. That’s a drop of 51.92% and most of them may be direct navigation domains. However as a ccTLD for the EU, it is a failure and very much a third choice after their local ccTLD and .com TLD. Just because there are people trading keyword domains in a TLD does not make it a success. It only means that there are people trading domains in that TLD and those sale prices are linked to the equivalent .com or ccTLD value.