Internationalized Domain Names

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) – The web pages of regular domain names that we are all familiar with are written in the standard ASCII characters using the 26 letters of the English alphabet and the numbers 0 to 9.

Although English is the dominant and preferred language of international commerce and the Internet, the native language of a large part of the world is not English and in many foreign languages, for example French, German, Chinese, Russian and Arabic, there are characters that are not used in English and more importantly, do not translate into ASCII.

In our recent article entitled Internationalized Domain Names we wrote that:

According to Global Reach, 60% of the Internet users in 2002 are non-English speakers. Companies that do not address this market segment are missing out on an enormous opportunity.

Localize your website to more effectively reach target your audience. Whether you are a global enterprise, or a locally focused company, establishing a presence on the Internet is a must. The first step is, of course, selecting a domain name to serve as the access point to your Web site. Now, with the availability of Internationalized Domain Names, you can select a name that will be most meaningful and effective for your audience or market.

You can click on Internationalized Domain Names to read our original article.

I have just read an interesting article entitled “How to Get Started with IDNs – 14 Tips, Techniques and Resources”. Here are some quotes:

Instead of buying domains like cars.com or similar premium domains, you are buying domains like cars.com in Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. The only difference is that the IDN cars.com are a lot cheaper and have more appreciation potential as IDN use is still in its infancy.

Although most of the reason to invest in IDNs is future potential, there have already been a number of notable sales of IDNs, including the sale of st?dtereisen.de (city travel) for $104,325. To find a fairly comprehensive list of public IDN sales, you should check out the IDN Sales website.

Interested? You can click on How to Get Started with IDNs – 14 Tips, Techniques and Resources to read the full article.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: ASCII, Domain Names, IDNs, internationalized-domain-names, web, web pages

Tags: ASCII, Domain Names, IDNs, internationalized-domain-names, web, web pages