You can see a “beautiful” address everywhere

On the biggest Russian Internet event last month one of our accredited registrars, Webnames.RU gave us an interview, speaking about our new Cyrillic domain names. See what are their advantages and disadvantages in the opinion of the long experienced Russian Marketing expert Mr Smirnov.

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН: Webnames.ru is one of our accredited registrars. Thank you very much for taking part in our interview. First, please, introduce yourself and tell us more about your company.

Fedor Smirnov: Webnames.ru – is one of the biggest ICANN accredited Russian domain names registrars. We offer more than 200 TLDs and the total number of our customers registrations exceeds 500,000. At the same time, we are one of the first Russian registrars with working history of more then 13 years.

During this time we turned into an “one stop shop” service providing everything that relates to Internet infrastructure: on Webnames.ru you can buy hosting services, rent a server, get a SSL-certificate for website, connect your mail to a certain domain.

A special project for us is the providing of Cyrillic domain names, because the Webnames.ru started the registration for the domain .РУ(ru) in 2004, when the browsers knew absolutely nothing about domain names it Cyrillic. According to specific grounds the first Cyrillic domain became .РФ (rf), but the active Webnames.ru support for the idea of domains on the national languages contributed to the fact that the new Cyrillic domain .РУС (rus) now expects delegation and is going to start before the end of 2014.

My name is Fedor Smirnov and I’m responsible for the marketing direction and development for Webnames.ru projects.

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН: How do you think, what it the difference between the Cyrillic domains and the Latin ones?

Fedor Smirnov: In fact, for the Internet users the Cyrillic domains are clear and convenient addresses for websites. They are recognizable as names and for us there is no difference between them and the usual signs, street signs, billboards and posters that we see every day. People used to read in their native language, so if it is in Cyrillic, it is logical the usage of Cyrillic alphabet also on the Web. The Cyrillic Internet addresses are just starting to win a popularity in the world, where the majority of domain names are still written by Latin letters.

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН: In your opinion, are there any disadvantages in buying a domain in Cyrillic and what are they?

Fedor Smirnov: An eternal problem became the Cyrillic domain e-mail, for example an address like: федор@вебнеймс.сайт. A lot of time was spent on the development of a single standard, which would make possible a written entirely in Cyrillic e-mail address. However, its implementation will require the efforts of various software developers, a support of the Cyrillic e-mail by leading Internet services and maybe even a new keyboard. Now in order to insert the @-sign in the Cyrillic e-mail address you need to switch the keyboard and this is inconvenient.

Another problem are the search engines, because they don’t know how to handle addresses in Cyrillic, transforming them into Punycode (xn -). As a result, some webmeisters complains that to promotion of websites with Cyrillic domain names is more complicate.

In my opinion, the both identified problems will pass by the time. But not time wasted vainly and filled with work on new sites, projects and services for Cyrillic domains. The searchers, software developers and Internet giants will not listen to anyone but their own audience. And if it will assess the Cyrillic alphabet, all problems will be resolved quickly enough.

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН: What advantages do you see in buying a domain in Cyrillic for the end user?

Fedor Smirnov: I think, instead of fixing the defects we need to use Cyrillic domains on purpose, where they work for the best. I mean outdoor advertising, radio and even contextual ads, where the user can see a “beautiful” address on the advertised online-resource.

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН: Who, in your opinion, should buy domains .САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН? How they can be useful for the people?

Fedor Smirnov: The Advantages and limitations of domain names written by Cyrillic characters, we have already discussed in detail.

In the first place, it is an opportunity to register a beautiful suitable domain name, instead of making compromises and being satisfied with the few left free “old” domains.

This is confirmed by the results of the first open registration of .САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН: both domains have been the most popular among the new top-level domains available at Webnames.ru. In April our customers have registered over 500 new domain names in Cyrillic.

.САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН: Thank you!