.EU domains and the search engines

[bill]

Do any search engines recognize .eu domains as regional? I know that the reception to .eu hasn't been warm, and a lot of people have been blogging about the general failure of this new domain launch. However, I'd like to know if a .eu domain would rank any better in local SEs.

[ThomasB]

I only have a few projects on .eu domains and I think that they behave exactly like .com/.net/.org domains. I think that they might look a little suspicious to some people. For example here in Germany, ".de" is very very accepted, even among web beginners.

[bill]

They promoted .eu as a regional domain and even checked registration credentials to make sure someone associated with the name was an EU resident or at least affiliated in some way. Didn't this didn't follow through to the local SEs? I remember that before the launch there were a lot of high hopes for the .eu domains...

So a regional Yahoo or Google won't lend any extra local relevance to a .eu?

[Rumbas]

>So a regional Yahoo or Google won't lend any extra local relevance to a .eu?

I think you're right there Bill. In terms of the EU - what are local relevance? I don't see it happening as G or Y wont be able to locate the local aspect. Europe is not "local" entities.

[bill]

This goes along the same lines as the .ASIA domains as well. They're set up as regional TLDs. They setup a screening process to confirm a local presence during the application process, but no search engine acknowledges them as being relevant to a local area. This kills a lot of the value right out of the gate.

Are there any SEs that recognize these type of domains as having local relevance? Given the years it took to bring .eu to fruition you'd think that they would have put some feelers out to the search industry. Otherwise the value is seriously compromised.

[Receptional Andy]

The major search engines' own approach to .eu is interesting. They've all registered the names, however:

Google.eu - not even a DNS record or redirect
live.eu - same as Google
yahoo.eu - asks you to be more specific about the region you want, considers .eu to be 'international'

[bill]

Well, they are international to a certain extent. ;) But I know what you mean. They seem to get the .com, .net, .org treatment at this stage.

Other than local hosting I guess there isn't much that can be done in terms of promoting regonality of a .eu, is there?

[Receptional Andy]

Perhaps targeting all of Europe is something of a niche which few sites do (there are obvious ones like europa.eu I suppose). And probably few searchers would want results in all of the different languages covered by Europe, although it wouldn't be difficult for google.eu et al to return such results - it seems they've decided there's not enough audience for it.