Editing .eu (section)

==Actual use==
{{More citations needed|date=December 2008}}
The main users of .eu domains are websites with pan-European or cross-border intentions and audiences. It is often used to emphasise the 'European identity' of a website, as opposed to the website having a strictly national ccTLD or global "dotcom" nature. Alternative ([[Domain hack|opportunistic]]) uses include [[Basque Country (greater region)|Basque]] webpages (as the initial letters of [[Euskadi]] or the language [[Euskara]]) and Romanian, Portuguese, or [[Galicia (Spain)|Galician]] personal sites, as {{lang|roa|eu}} is the equivalent of the English pronoun 'I' in those languages.

In most countries of the EU, the national ccTLDs have the major share of the market with the remainder spread over [[.com]]/[[.net]]/[[.org]]/[[.info]]/[[.biz]]. As a result of this, .eu has had an uphill battle to gain a significant share of these national markets. The dominant players tend to be the national ccTLD and .com. The other TLDs such as [[.net]], [[.org]] and to a lesser extent [[.info]] and [[.biz]] have progressively smaller shares of these national markets.

Some .eu domain names have had some popularity, such as [[torrentz2.eu]]. As of November 2019, according to the Tranco rank, the top 100 thousand most popular domains in the world included over 200 .eu domains.<ref>{{cite conference |first1=Victor |last1=Le Pochat |first2=Tom |last2=Van Goethem |first3=Samaneh |last3=Tajalizadehkhoob |first4=Maciej |last4=Korczynski |title=Tranco: A Research-Oriented Top Sites Ranking Hardened Against Manipulation |url=https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ndss2019_01B-3_LePochat_paper.pdf |doi=10.14722/ndss.2019.23386 |first5=Wouter |last5=Joosen |book-title=Network and Distributed Systems Security (NDSS) Symposium 2019 |isbn=1-891562-55-X|doi-access=free }}</ref>

===Parking and redirects===
{{More citations needed|date=December 2008}}

As of around 2010, some statistics indicated a large number of .eu domains being used to direct to other domains.
* Some domain registrants use their .eu website as a web portal containing a list of their national websites with national [[ccTLD]]s.
* Other registrants have registered a .eu domain name to protect the brand name of their main website or domain, and redirect visitors to their pre-existing national ccTLD or .com website. ''(example: [http://www.champagne.eu/ www.champagne.eu])''
* 12.8% of .eu websites are parking pages with [[pay per click]] (PPC) advertisements.<ref name="eurid.eu">{{cite web|url=http://www.eurid.eu/files/Insights_Cat3.pdf|title=Website usage trends among top-level domains|work=EURid|date=24 November 2011|access-date=4 October 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121202140352/http://www.eurid.eu/files/Insights_Cat3.pdf|archive-date=2 December 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref> ISPs and web hosters will often point unused domains to a [[domain parking]] webpage with PPC advertising. This percentage does not include .eu domains that are pointed to holding pages or not set up in DNS.
* 26% of .eu domain names are redirects for existing national ccTLD or .com websites.<ref name="eurid.eu"/>

According to page 20 of [[EURid]]'s [https://web.archive.org/web/20111110022315/http://www.eurid.eu/files/2006_annual_report.pdf Annual Report for 2006], the breakdown of .eu domain ownership figures on 31 December 2006 was:

* Registrants with more than 10,000 domains: 6
* Registrants with 5,000–9,999 domains: 18
* Registrants with 1,000–4,999 domains: 64
* Registrants with 100-999 domains: 1,257
* Registrants with 10–99 domains: 20,886
* Registrants with 6–9 domains: 22,933
* Registrants with 5 domains: 13,200 – (66,000 domains)
* Registrants with 4 domains: 23,007 – (92,028 domains)
* Registrants with 3 domains: 42,887 – (128,661 domains)
* Registrants with 2 domains: 115,543 – (231,086 domains)
* Registrants with 1 domain: 610,679

The number of registrants with five domains or fewer registered in .eu ccTLD was, according to these statistics, 805,316. These registrants accounted for 1,128,454 domains out of 2,444,947 .eu domains registered as of 31 December 2006. These registrations, typically those of individuals and companies protecting their brand,{{citation needed|date=November 2019}} only represent 46% of the number of registered .eu domains.