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[DENICpresse <presse AT denic.de>]

Dear Sir or Madam,

In a recently published study investigating the ranking and the 
attractiveness of Top Level Domains as assessed by Internet users the 
ccTLD .de scored excellently and recorded the best TLD result, preceding 
.com and .co.uk. Sabine Dolderer, CEO of DENIC, the independent provider 
of the name service for the .de zone, values this as another proof of 
DENIC's competent performance to the benefit of the Internet community and 
as an acknowledgement of DENIC’s nearly 23-year old proven and tested 
business model of self-controlled domain administration.

The study, which was executed by EURid, the operator that administers the 
TLD .eu, illuminates the interplay between the attractiveness of a leading 
TLD - as a combined result of brand strength and customer service quality 
– and the number of end users interested in domains under that TLD. EURid 
included the generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) .com, .net, .org, .biz, 
.info and .eu and the European country code Top Level Domains (ccTLD) .be, 
.cz, .de, .dk, .es, .fr, .it, .pl, .se and .co.uk in its assessment.

The brand strength of TLDs, which was defined as the total of the three 
key attributes "Awareness", "Relevance" and "Preference", was determined 
within the scope of a comparative brand analysis carried out between 
December 2009 and January 2010 in 10 countries with 400 participants, 
respectively.

While all ccTLDs included in the study scored 95% aided Awareness in their 
home countries and thus were nearly level with .com, the results for 
Relevance differed widely. Except for Sweden (.se) and Germany (.de) the 
interviewed persons attributed much higher relevance to .com than to the 
TLD of their own country.

More than three quarters of all the end users who participated in the 
study preferred .com or their local TLD to any other gTLD. As regards the 
Preference for .com or the respective ccTLD, the values varied 
considerably by country: Only the country code TLDs of Germany (.de), 
Sweden (.se), the Czech Republic (.cz) and Denmark (.dk) outscored .com in 
this aspect of Preference ranking. The study found that the varying 
assessments are due to the degree the individual TLD satisfies specific 
brand characteristics: Users apparently prefer TLDs they feel to meet 
conservative values such as "convincing", "trustworthy", "stable", "high 
quality" and "safe" particularly well.

As regards the second pillar of a TLD's attractiveness, customer service, 
the German ccTLD also achieved very good results in the overall rating. 
Here, .de scored second among all the investigated ccTLDs, preceded only 
slightly by .nl.

The complete study “How Top-Level Domain Customer Service and Brand 
Influence Customer Buying Behaviour” with all the results and analyses can 
be found on the website of EURid for download at 
http://www.eurid.eu/en/about/facts-figures/insights.


Kind regards

Stefanie Welters
Public Relations Division
-- 

DENIC eG
Kaiserstraße 75-77
60329 Frankfurt am Main
GERMANY

E-Mail: presse AT denic.de
Fon: +49 69 27235-274 
Fax: +49 69 27235-235
http://www.denic.de

Angaben nach § 25a Absatz 1 GenG:
DENIC Domain Verwaltungs- und Betriebsgesellschaft eG (Sitz: Frankfurt am 
Main)
Vorstand: Sabine Dolderer, Helga Krüger, Carsten Schiefner, Dr. Jörg 
Schweiger 
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Elmar Knipp
Eingetragen unter Nr. 770 im Genossenschaftsregister, Amtsgericht 
Frankfurt am Main

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