Counting the Cost of Buying a European Domain

We have been looking at lately into buying a few different European country code top level domains (cc-tld) for an international SEO campaign we have running, and we found some differences in prices and restrictions on registering and running a website on these different TLD’s.
As we are from Munich we know that in Europe you can find many different rules and regulations in such small areas – looks like that has worked its way into buying a humble url!

Here is a short review on what it costs to buy a cc-tld in Europe, what are the popular tld’s and what rules and restrictions are there on starting a website on a European domain.

Average Price of a European Domain

Here we did a simple test; we found an unused tld (very tough nowdays) and plugged it into a few major online domain name registry websites to see exactly how much it would cost in the different country code TLD’s (we didn’t try it for every European cc, just for a range of them – including .com as a comparison). We then simply took an average of that price to find out on average how much that cc-tld would cost.

Note: Some cc-tld’s were not available on some of the domain name registry websites, so we just used the numbers we could find. All prices were in US$, they do not include any other taxes or registration fee that may come with the domain name registration website.

The unused TLD we used: “rock2013withrockit”

• .COM (Worldwide) – $14.33
• .DE (Germany) – $18.09
• .CO.UK (United Kingdom) – $11.68
• .NL (Netherlands) – $17.00
• .RU (Russia) – $29.54
• .EU (European Union) – $12.46
• .IT (Italy) – $22.36
• .FR (France) – $27.88
• .CH (Switzerland) – $25.67
• .PL (Poland) – $20.66
• .ES (Spain) – $16.14
• .BE (Belgium) – $18.51
• .SE (Sweden) – $31.00
• .AT (Austria) – $24.41
• .DK (Denmark) – $35.43
• .IE (Ireland) – $66.25

Popular Top Level Domains in Europe

As I was looking into the price of the TLD’s it got me thinking how popular these European CC-TLD’s are, so of course we went and found out. Here is the list of how many currently registered TLD’s there are for the European countries we tested:

• .COM – 107,617,731
• .DE – 15,389,850
• .UK – 10,386,743
• .NL – 5,210,353
• .RU – 4,443,449
• .EU – 3,737,841
• .IT – 2,538,929
• .FR – 2,500,000
• .CH – 1,752,794
• .PL – 1,670,407
• .ES – 1,638,422
• .BE – 1,371,696
• .SE – 1,290,560
• .DK – 1,216,018
• .AT – 1,202,920
• .IE – 175,000

Wow! We knew the German .de was popular but we had no idea there are a third more registered than .uk. In fact, it is the second most used TLD on the internet behind .com (more than .net!).

Rules, Regulations and Other Stuff

In some places throughout Europe obtaining a cc-tld is not just as easy as buying one online, some have certain restrictions and rules as to who can buy and use their TLD’s. Here is the info:

.COM

• No restrictions on purchase
• One of the oldest and the most popular TLD on the web
• First domain registered: symbolics.com

.DE

• Address in Germany required to register a .de domain name
• Impressum required on any commercial website

.UK

• Registrations are only done with the second level domain .co.uk (Very rare for a .uk to be permitted)

.NL

• No restrictions on purchase
• First official official country code TLD to be registered (1986)

.RU

• No restrictions on purchase

.EU

• Minimum of 1 year and maximum of 10 year registration
• You must live in one of the 27 European Community Countries to register a .eu domain

.IT

• Restricted to EU Citizens or Companies with an EU Address
• Commonly used as a website hack: from the English word: “it”. eg. ROCK.it

.FR

• To register a .fr you must be one of these;
  1. A company registered under French Law
  2. A French resident aged of at least 18 years
  3. Or hold a registered Trademark covering the French territory
  4. A French citizen living abroad
• Also, you must appoint an admin contact located and contactable in France

.CH

• URLS’s must be at least 3 characters long

.PL

• No restrictions on purchase

.ES

• No restrictions on purchase
• Commonly used as a website hack

.BE

• No restrictions on purchase
• Used as a YouTube url shortener – Youtu.be

.SE

• No restrictions on purchase
• Used as a domain hack; “se” is a common ending of English words eg. ROCKITrul.es

.AT

• No restrictions on purchase
• Commonly used as a domain hack due to English word “at”. eg. ROCK.at

.DK

• No restrictions on purchase

.IE

• “All applicants applying for a .ie domain name who are not situated in the 32 counties of Ireland, must demonstrate a real and substantive connection with Ireland (with the exception of those applying by means of Community Trademark)” – https://www.iedr.ie/
• Normally more expensive than other TLD, this has led to a slow pickup rate of .ie’s

Read more here about international SEO, or contact us for more information about SEO and link building in the German speaking part of Europe..

References

https://www.sidn.nl/
http://www.cctld.ru/en/
http://www.nic.it/
http://www.nic.fr/fr/ressources/statistiques/donnees-detaillees-sur-les-domaines/donnees-detaillees-sur-le-fr/
https://www.nic.ch/reg/cm/wcm-page/statistics/index.html?lid=en
http://www.dns.pl/english/zonestats.html
http://www.dominios.es/dominios/en
http://www.dns.be/en/home
https://www.iis.se/english/domains/domain-statistics/
http://www.nic.at/uebernic/statistiken/
https://www.dk-hostmaster.dk/
https://www.iedr.ie/