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…