.eu - Less than 16% Of Websites Actively Developed?

The figure for active web development in .eu is now close to 16%. I’ve been refining the parsing (classifying holding pages and redirects based on frame src tags, duplicate content checking etc) and the active web figure now stands at 286222 websites out of the initial 1.436M websites. That’s 19.94% of the websites and 16.16% of the total resolving .eu domains. The .eu ccTLD is a disaster zone compared to real ccTLDs. In comparison, the .ie figure is around 57% of websites actively developed - a far higher figure.

There has to be a critical mass of natural web development in an extension to make the extension viable for both business and speculation. It is that natural web development that makes an extension valuable.

The current figures show 112685 websites parked with PPC. That’s 7.85% of the websites and 6.36% of the domains. The aggregators/warehousers/direct navigation networks account for 126257 websites. That’s 8.79% of the websites and 7.13% of the domains. So effectively 15.15% of the websites are PPC monetised - that excludes those using Google Adsense or other webmaster monetisation.
I’m not sure if the uncertainty caused by EURid’s bungling attempts at clamping down on phantom registrars was the problem. The problem was the European Commission awarding contract to run the .eu ccTLD to a ccTLD registry venture with no real gTLD experience. The .eu ccTLD is not really a ccTLD but rather a gTLD. The legal framework was botched as well. If it had specified prior rights and prior use then a lot of the Sunrise problems would not have happened. Some landrush speculators pooled their resources to snap up names of existing European businesses and websites. Many of these domain names were the .eu variants of European small businesses who could not really afford an expensive ADR. These small businesses form the core of any ccTLD.

Many of those domains registered by those phantom registrars are still registered and a lot are framed Sedo parking pages. Others have no nameservers so that they do not appear to be active. There are .eu domains registered with obviously fake addresses and EURid has taken no action for over a year. It seems that EURid management doesn’t care about running .eu as long as it can tell its political masters that the extension is a great success with millions of domains registered.

But grouping all speculators together is dangerous. Some speculators are there to develop websites and provide that essential natural web development growth to the extension. Others are there to flip the domains or monetise the domains with PPC. The opportunity is still there but the audience is not.

It will take years for .eu to recover from the damage caused by EURid’s incompetent handling of the landrush and phantom registrar issues. It may not even recover until after EURid loses the contract to run the ccTLD and the ccTLD is reorganised by people who actually understand the domain name industry.

Tags: ,, , , , , ,

Written by John McCormac on July 17th, 2007 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Search Engines and Domains And Statistics.

Related articles

4 comments

Comments are now disabled for this article, thank you for your participation. Read the comments left by other users below, or:

Trackback Mention from Domainnews.com
#1. July 19th, 2007, at 5:51 AM.

» Only 16% of .eu Websites Developed? Domain Name News - The Domain Industry News at DomainNews.com, Domain: Source: Written by John McCormac on July 17th - http://blog.whoisireland.com/2007/07/17/eu-less-than-16-of-websites-actively-developed/

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Dariusz
#2. July 19th, 2007, at 9:53 AM.

For this moment nothing, except the ADR procedure, can be done to transfer the domain to the legitimate owner of the name who could develop a website. As a lawyer who actively takes part in eu domain disputes I would like to see some changes to the EU ADR procedures including a possibility of class action (many domains are registered by one cybersquatter) by or obligation to return the ADR and lawyer’s fees from the losing party. For this moment EU ADR procedure is quite efficient, but with no financial risk the speculators hold many grabbed domains without fear.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John McCormac
#3. July 19th, 2007, at 3:20 PM.

The possibility of a class action option would solve a lot of problems Dariusz,
The Buycool.com/Blogdo.com operation has about 8000 domains being tracked at the moment and it really is just a cybersquatting operation. Other operations like the Jay Westerdal / Ray King series of UK front companies also could be dealt with in such an action. The Kurt Janusch operation (XSS.RO) had over 43K .eu domains registered in March 2007. But it dropped over 30K of these after the anniversary of the landrush. Many of them were the names of European businesses. The problem was that many of these domains have not been reregistered by the real businesses as they are ignoring .eu and concentrating on their .com or ccTLD brand.

I think that DNS.be (where EURid gets most of its staff from) introduced a system where the costs of the ADR are split between the complainant and the respondent. That, if used with .eu, would encourage more businesses to take ADRs against cybersquatters and warehousers. However it should have been a part of the original ADR system.

Many of the speculators no longer respond to ADRs. The latest ADR against Jay Westerdal/Ray King (Fienna Limited) concerning 4711.eu was uncontested. Their eight UK front companies have tens of thousands of domains warehoused and both are highly connected to US based .eu registrars.

The terrible irony is that EURid was charged with protecting the integrity of .eu in the legislation. However the sheer incompetence of EURid in assuring the integrity of the ccTLD has been amazing. Domains with obviously fake address data still exist. The warehousers still exist. Cybersquatting of high profile brands still exists. The only thing that does not exist is the confidence of the business community in .eu, and that is sad because .eu could have been a good ccTLD for Europe.

Trackback Mention from Dedominibus.com
#4. August 30th, 2007, at 6:32 PM.

.EU alla prova dei cybersquatters | De Dominibus: Ai proclami trionfalistici dello Eurid ha risposto fra gli altri sempre Whoisireland, che un mesetto e mezzo fa aveva ...