(Entry was posted by Micah Fisher-Kirshner on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 03/27/2014).

Is it ever appropriate to use a .EU domain instead of a cctld?

I have a non-American question (and non-Australian) SEO question that I think is unique for Europe:

When (if ever) is it appropriate to use a .EU domain instead of .co.uk, .de, .fr, etc? What are the situations that could be beneficial (if any) for having both country-specific and a higher level regional domain for SEO purposes??

This question begins at 02:20:02 into the clip. Did this video clip play correctly? Watch this question on YouTube commencing at 02:20:02

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Micah Fisher-Kirshner: I have a non-American question (and non-Australian) SEO question that I think is unique for Europe:

When (if ever) is it appropriate to use a .EU domain instead of .co.uk, .de, .fr, etc? What are the situations that could be beneficial (if any) for having both country-specific and a higher level regional domain for SEO purposes?
Andrea Pernici: Up to now I can't see any benefit.
Federico Sasso: Not sure I'm getting it. Google consider .eu a generic top level domain, despite the fact it is semantically bound to Europe.
You usually register .eu when not .com/.net is available, or to prevent others doing it.
Shawn Cohen: My only thought: If you coupled the .eu domain with hreflang tags, you could deliver one site across all of Europe if you didn't have the wherewithal to maintain .fr, .de, etc websites. Kinda would defeat the purpose but it could be a good stopgap until multi-language sites were fully functional.
Dave Elliott: no one uses .eu domains. it is very rare you see them.

as for having both domains, it is the same answer for having a co.uk(say) site and a .com site. ;
Masatake Wasa: I am struggling to see any benefits specific to using a .eu domain. I think many Europeans are comfortable with a .com (or .net or .org) as the supranational domain name. There are European countries that are not members of the EU, so that's another consideration.
Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 02:20:02 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/is_it_ever_appropriate_to_use_a_eu_domain_instead_of_a_cctld +Micah Fisher-Kirshner

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