IDNs: domain names with accents
What is an IDN or Accented Domain Name?
IDNs, short for Internationalized Domain Names, allow the use of accents and special characters from the world’s major languages. The apostrophe commonly used in French does not exist in IDN domain names.
IDNs are available in major legacy extensions and in the corresponding country-code extensions.
According to the World Report on Internationalised Domain Names 2020, there are about 9 million IDNs, roughly 2.5% of all domain names. China has the highest number of IDN registrations.
Although they are available in most extensions (COM, NET, FR, BE, CH, etc.), they remain little known, including among internet professionals. As long as this remains the case, it is not recommended to develop a site using an IDN domain name, unless you also have the corresponding ASCII version. Otherwise, a significant share of the promotional efforts for a site using an IDN will benefit the holder of the non-accented version.
IDNs present some practical issues, notably the difficulty of creating email addresses. On the other hand, they can perform well for organic search and for sponsored link campaigns, and they have aesthetic qualities, especially for logos and other visuals. Some observers consider them as promising in the long term as conventional ( ASCII ) domain names. In a few countries such as Germany or Russia, some websites use addresses with IDNs, which does not pose a problem for younger generations, who adopt them relatively quickly.
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