Business websites predominate online

.eu popular choice for commerce

Brussels, 24 November 2011 – Business is the most common use for websites across most top-level domains, according to a report published by EURid, the .eu registry.

The report, which aims to understand how websites are used, reveals that on average 26.5% of websites are used for business purposes. .eu, with 31.4%, has an above average business usage.

“Our findings underscore the fact that businesses across the European Union have consistently embraced .eu,” said Marc Van Wesemael, EURid’s General Manager. “They realise that .eu is ideal for trading in many EU countries because it has a unique cross-border dimension.”

.eu maintains its strong business profile for the third consecutive year.

Findings are based on the results of a manual analysis of 50 000 websites across 11 top-level domains: .biz, .com, .eu, .info, .mobi, .net, .org, .pro extensions and three European national TLDs. Each website was categorised into one of eight categories: business, community, pay-per-click (PPC), holding page, institutional, password protected, error and pornography.

Further findings include:

• Behind business, the next most common uses for websites are error (23.5%), holding page (20.6%) and PPC (17.3%), possibly reflecting the low cost of registering domain names
• Older generic TLDs still have distinctive usage profiles, for example .org maintains a high proportion of community websites
• Pornography only accounts for 0.4% of websites, contradicting the commonly held perception that the Internet has a large number of pornographic websites.

The report “Website usage trends among top-level domains” is available for download at http://link.eurid.eu/insights. It forms part of the .eu Insights report series, which is based on surveys, studies and research conducted by EURid, in cooperation with industry experts and sector leaders.

For media information, please contact:

Megan Vosloo, Communications Officer   Phone: 32 (0)2 401 3019   Email: press@eurid.eu 

About .eu and EURid

The .eu domain ranks among the ten largest top-level domains in the world, connecting 500 million people in 27 EU countries to one Internet identity. More than three million .eu names have been registered since the domain opened for registration in 2005. Many companies use a .eu website as a practical solution to convey a clear European identity, including Bridgestone, Century 21, Hyundai, the MAN Group, Microsoft Corporation and the UniCredit Group.

EURid is the not-for-profit organisation appointed by the European Commission to operate the .eu top-level domain. EURid works with over 850 accredited registrars and provides support in the 23 official EU languages. With headquarters in Brussels (Belgium), EURid also has regional offices in Pisa (Italy), Prague (the Czech Republic) and Stockholm (Sweden). More information at http://www.eurid.eu.