Fr-Domains with special characters

May 9, 2012 - PRLog -- As of December 6, 2011, the rules for registering French domains have changed. The owner of a domain must not be based anymore in France. All European companies, organizations and individuals  can register French domains. This change affects not only fr-domains, but all domains, which AFNIC manages:
# .Re (Reunion)
# .Wf (Wallis and Futuna)
# .Yt (Mayotte)
# .Pm (Saint Pierre et Miquelon)
# .Tf (Terre et Australes Antarctique)

Prospects for fr-domains outside of Europe can also register at us fr-domains. For such clients, AFNIC-Member Secura  offers  a  trustee service. Domain names at the official com.fr subdomains, and at also at asso.fr and tm.fr will from December 6 no longer be registered. The owner of such domain names can prolong their domains.

What opportunities are opening up for you? You can now register at AFNIC registrar Secura fr-domains,which you could not register before. You can also register at AFNIC registrar Secura re-domains, wf-domains, yt-domains, pm-domains and tf-domains.

Fr-Domains are important to rank well at French search engines. Many French search engines accept only fr-domains. Google has for every great country a special national version. You can rank well at Google and national French search engines by using "key words" and the French names at .fr.

The French Registry introduces IDN .fr. You can register since 3.May 2012
.fr with special characters like accents.

There are two phases: a "grandfathering period" between 3.Mai and 3.July. Owners of fr-domains can get their IDN .fr.

After 3rd July 2012 anybody can register .fr with special characters.

Hans-Peter Oswald
http://www.domainregistry.de/fr-domain.html