.eu Domains - any leverage for EU engines?

or should I stick to a 'local language' .com

[markd]

I was wondering if anyone had any opinion or feedback on the usefulness of a .eu domain for a EU search engine campaign?

I have been planning a campaign for a client in French and German where I would use a 'local language' .com as the domain.

Even though I believe .eu's are still at pre-registration stage, I am now in two minds which way to go.

[heini]

Being very optimistic the new TLD might go live end of this year.
So it's not an option at the time being.

Generally this new extension might prove useful in the next years. But I doubt it would be a good choice for a business site - it's new, it does not imply a specific origin (language, country) of the site, and it's related to the EU, implying baureaucracy, squandermania and other nice things.

[4eyes]

As many of the local european search engines require a local domain for entry, and many (presumably?) of their local sites will take a .eu domain, they have a decision to make.

Will we have .eu being allowed into regional engines, or will there be a new batch of search engines filtering for the .eu domain as well as the regionals, or will everyone in Europe just ignore the .eu domain?

hmmm...depending on the answer, Euroseek might have been a better buy than previously thought.

[heini]

Regarding the engines a dot-eu is not different from a .biz or a dot.info. Ususally engines filter for language.

[markd]

My understanding (not yet proven 'in battle') is that a local language .com, combined with a local language pages/site would be included in the engine in question.

When you consider some of the 'offline' requirements for registering domains such as .de etc. I am hoping this approach will work!

[heini]

Mark, even some german and french companies operate from a dot-com, so that's no problem.
Your approach - dot.com with keyword in local language as domain name plus local language - is a good solution.

[4eyes]

My understanding was that some European search engines still filter by domain name - is this not the case anymore (indeed, was it ever the case?)