For several years now, EURid (the .EU registry) has been running two yearly categorisation exercises regarding the use of .eu.
Throughout April, they deployed the first exercise of 2021 to understand possible new patterns within how people and businesses are using the .eu top-level domain. From a random sample of 100,000 domain names, they found that more than 80% of domains have active web services, and 15% are DNSSEC signed. Out of those names, more than 44% resolve into a structured website.
They classified the websites according to the categories as defined by NACE, the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community, and agreed by the members of CENTR.
In comparison to the categorisation of December 2020, the findings show a clear increase in the ‘Trade’ (+1.67%), ‘IT’ (+3.19%) and ‘Community’ (+3.62%) categories. The uptake in the first two categories is a sign of the market shift towards more online sales and services.
