Cyrillic domain name registration: pros, cons, pitfalls

When the first domains appeared, the Internet was only in the USA, where everyone spoke English. Therefore, in the domain name system, you can use only Latin characters, she does not understand others. Over time, the Internet spread around the world, and users suggested registering domains in other languages.

What is wrong with Cyrillic domains

In fact, a Cyrillic domain is a mask for a domain in the Punycode format. If the application does not support this encoding, you cannot use the name in Cyrillic spelling. Here are two situations from life when it is especially enraging:

Unable to create mail on the domain. Only Latin characters can be in the email address, therefore, creating an address in the format “@domain.ukr” will fail, only in the format “@xn-d1acufc.xn-j1amh”.

Links look like spam. Most browsers translate the domain into Punycode when copying. So far, only Firefox can copy in Cyrillic format.

Previously, Cyrillic domains were inconvenient to promote, because some tools understood Cyrillic, others did not. You could not copy the name once and quickly add it to all the tools. I often had to use services like Punycoder to translate the Cyrillic domain into Latin, and then manually correct the links.

Now this problem does not exist, the Cyrillic version works almost everywhere: in Google Analytics and the Google Search Console, Yandex Webmaster, Serpstat and SEMrush, on large reference exchanges and even in an XML site map.

Is it worth registering Cyrillic domains?

In addition to the lack of the ability to create mail and problems with the appearance of links, Cyrillic domains have the same properties as Latin ones. It makes sense to register them if these shortcomings do not seem significant to you. You may not need mail on the domain. Or you are making a one-page site and are ready to sacrifice the appearance of the links.

Alternatively, you can register a Cyrillic name in addition to the Latin one and use it as a mirror. So that people get to the same site by several names. This approach is used by Privatbank.

Cyrillic domains are also convenient to use in advertising; they are easy to remember and type without typos. Plus, there are still a lot of free names on the market, it is possible to register a beautiful name.