ccTLD
A top-level domain assigned to a country or territory, such as .de or .fr, which carries an inherent and unchangeable geo-targeting signal.
InternationalIDNPunycode
Internationalised domain name
A domain name containing non-ASCII characters, encoded for DNS as ASCII Punycode beginning with `xn--`.
In full
IDNs let brands use native scripts (Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, accented Latin) and Google handles them, but the Punycode form appears in logs, analytics, some tools and occasionally in browsers, which complicates reporting and link building. They also carry a homograph-spoofing risk that leads some browsers and security tools to display the Punycode form. Non-ASCII paths follow similar rules and should be consistently percent-encoded.
Example
`münchen-hotels.de` resolves as `xn--mnchen-hotels-ilb.de` in DNS and appears that way in server logs.
Related terms
URL structure
The design of a site's URL paths: readable, stable, lowercase, hyphen-separated and free of unnecessary parameters or session identifiers.
International SEO
Structuring and optimising a site so the right language and country version is served to the right audience in each market's search results.
Multilingual SEO
Optimising a site that serves several languages, ensuring each version is fully indexable, correctly annotated and not mixed within a…
Geo-targeting
Signalling which country a site or section is intended for, through ccTLD choice, hreflang region codes, server location, local links and…