Internationalized Domain Names: Forecasts and Trends

As you should know by now, an internationalized domain name (also known as an IDN or a international domain name) is a domain name that includes or is made up entirely of local language characters. For example then this domain name might include characters not in ASCII script such as Chinese or Arabic symbols. IDNs then provide a truly international internet where publishers can reach countries using symbols other than Latin in their own language allowing those with IDNs to reach large new audiences in China and the Middle East.

As IDNs haven’t been around for as long as ASCII-based domains , this means there are many more of them still available for domainers looking for catchy domains. It also drastically increases the combinations of domain names available. As countries and territories have to apply for IDNs this also means that there are many top level domains that have yet to allow IDNs which will be great potential future markets for domainers.

Recent IDN sales include Thai ‘เกมส์.net’ (games) which sold for $3,765 on 04/03/2010, ‘Schwerhörigkeit.ch’ (deafness) in German for $10,125 and the Chinese ‘手机铃声.com’ meaning ‘Ringtones’ which sold for $2,803. As you can see then, IDNs are a highly lucrative market in 2010.

So what trends are emerging in this are and which IDNs should you look out for? In general trends are moving towards Chinese IDNs as the Mandarin ‘Chinese language’ is currently responsible for around 30% of all online content – a trend that looks set to continue to grow as China increases in prominence on the world stage. In 2009 China’s .cn was the most popular of all country code TLDs, demonstrating what an important market this is (this was followed by the German .de).

Looking ahead, African domains are also a key area of interest for the coming years. With over 2,000 indigenous languages, many of which with over a million speakers, this is a vast potential market. Meanwhile the attempts of Virgin and The One Laptop Per Child Scheme charity aiming to get these countries online mean that very soon the internet could see a similar influx of African speaking viewers. While some of these use the Roman alphabet others use Amharic, Tigrinya – Ethiopic and other scripts. Effort is being made to bring IDNs to these TLDs by the Africa Top Level Domains association among others (interestingly it was an African, Prof Subbiah, who originally coined the term ‘IDN’). Until then TLDs supporting Portuguese and French characters (which many African countries use) might be a good way to prepare for the influx.

In the coming years more and more countries will be registering and applying for new ccTLDs to support IDNs. Recently for example Bulgaria has registered the cryliic domain ‘.бг’ (BG). As this continues the demographic of the internet will become more and more international, and domainers and webmasters alike will need to be ready if they’re to make the most of that.

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