January 29th, 2008

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Only 13.37% .eu Websites Active/Unique - .eu is a disaster zone

The latest WhoisIreland.com .eu web survey shows that the .eu ccTLD is in serious trouble. Out of 1723638 websites checked, only 13.37% of sites were active/unique. As a ccTLD for Europe, it is a disaster zone. Brand registrations accounted for 7.78% of registrations. The percentage of duplicate content sites was 6.02%. The percentage of websites that redirected elsewhere was 16.68%. The percentage of PPC/warehoused websites was 14.22%. The percentage of holding page sites was 16.79%

In terms of use, .eu is way below other ccTLDs. It is a junk extension. While some companies use .eu for a Europe-wide identity it is largely ignored as another example of useless EU bureaucratic corruption and waste in the rest of the European Union. If it wasn’t for German speculation and registrations driving the ccTLD, the .eu would have completely failed long ago.

The post-landrush development that takes place in a well run ccTLD is just not happening in .eu ccTLD. This is due, mainly, to EURid’s incompetent handling of the landrush and Sunrise phases. The small businesses and developers that would have provided that initial development spurt were missing. They were missing because the fools in EURid took no action to prevent .eu being speculated, cyberwarehoused and cybersquatted. The EURid people were simply outclassed by even the simplest of speculators faking the country field in the whois data while including a complete US postal address. Even years later, some of these bogus registrations are still there because EURid is too incompetent to detect them. But then detecting them would reduce the size of the .eu zone and EURid has to keep up the pretence that .eu is a great success for their clueless political masters in the European Commission.

The .eu ccTLD is a failure. It is a failure because of EURid’s utter incompetence in dealing with the cyberwarehousing and cybersquatting issues. These guys were too stupid to realise what was going on when the .eu ccTLD was being stolen by non-EU speculators and cybersquatters. And now .eu is a disaster zone - irrelevant to citizens of the EU and a joke of ccTLD in the industry. Perhaps it would be best if EURid was stripped of the administration of .eu and the ccTLD redelegated to a more competent registry. Otherwise the longterm outlook for .eu is dire.

In real terms, .eu already begun to resemble a third choice TLD like .info or .biz. While the total registrations figure may seem impressive, broken down on a country by country basis and compared against those country’s ccTLD and TLD holdings, .eu is not making any significant inroads into these markets. Even the cyberwarehousers are giving up on .eu ccTLD.
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Written by John McCormac on January 29th, 2008 with 10 comments.
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ICANN Ends Domain Tasting?

According to a post on Bret Fausett’s blog, ICANN has passed a resolution that will end Domain Tasting. It has taken ICANN a long time to deal with the problem. Domain Tasting exploits the Add Grace Period. The AGP is a five day grace period during which a domain could be cancelled without the registrar having to pay for it. This move is long over-due and ICANN has been criticised for not acting promptly to fix the problem.
The AGP was intended to protect the registrars from various fraudulent registrations and obvious customer mistakes. However it was used by unscrupulous operators to sift through millions of domains each day for domains that would monetise well and justify the registration cost. Other operations were registering typos of trademarks on an industrial scale and the Dell Vs Belgium Domains et al is perhaps the first example of a major case being taken against such operations.
ICANN’s move against Domain Tasting was long over-due. The move by Google against monetising domains less than five days old was, perhaps, the trigger that kicked ICANN into bothering to take action.

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Written by John McCormac on January 29th, 2008 with no comments.
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