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.

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 brand "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.

In the overall rating based on all evaluation criteria and weightings, .de finally holds the leading position before .com - another proof of DENIC's high quality and competence, thus reflected in the great esteem of the Internet community, and an acknowledgement of DENIC’s nearly 23-year old proven and tested business model of self-controlled domain administration.

You will find the detailed results of the study with tables and graphs of all the analyzed TLDs on .eu's website for download.