Register non-English domain names with Webmaster Tools
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Monday, August 27, 2007
I'm happy to announce that Webmaster Tools is expanding support for webmasters outside of the
English-speaking world, by supporting
Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA).
IDNA provides a way for site owners to have domains that go beyond the domain name system's
limitations of English letters and numbers. Prior to IDNA, Internet host names could only be in
the 26 letters of the English alphabet, the numbers 0-9, and the hyphen character. With IDNA
support, you'll now be able to add your sites that use other character sets, and organize them
easily on your Webmaster Tools Dashboard.
Let's say you wanted to add https://北京大学.cn/ (Peking University) to your Webmaster
Tools account before we launched IDNA support. If you typed that in to the "Add Site" box, you'd
get back an error message that looks like this:
Some webmasters discovered a workaround. Internally, IDNA converts nicely encoded
https://北京大学.cn/ to a format called
Punycode,
which looks like https://xn--1lq90ic7fzpc.cn/. This allowed them to diagnose and view
information about their site, but it looked pretty ugly. Also, if they had more than one IDNA
site, you can imagine it would be pretty hard to tell them apart.
Since we now support IDNA throughout Webmaster Tools, all you need to do is type in the name of
your site, and we will add it correctly. Here is what it looks like if you attempt to add
https://北京大学.cn/ to your account:
If you are one of the webmasters who discovered the workaround previously (that is, you have had
sites listed in your account that look like https://xn--1lq90ic7fzpc.cn/), those sites
will now automatically display correctly.
We'd love to hear your questions and feedback on this new feature; you can post in the
Google Webmaster Tools
section of our Webmaster Help Group. We'd also appreciate suggestions for other ways we can
improve our international support.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eWebmaster Tools now supports Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA), allowing site owners to use domains with characters beyond English letters and numbers.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWebmasters can now add sites with non-English characters, such as \u003ccode\u003ehttps://北京大学.cn/\u003c/code\u003e, directly into their Webmaster Tools account without using Punycode workarounds.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003ePreviously added sites using Punycode will now automatically display with their original characters.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle welcomes feedback and suggestions on this new IDNA feature and further improvements for international support through the Webmaster Help Group.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Webmaster Tools now supports Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA), enabling site owners to use non-English characters in domain names. Previously limited to English letters, numbers, and hyphens, the system now accepts domains like `https://北京大学.cn/`. Users can add such sites directly without the need for Punycode workarounds (e.g., `https://xn--1lq90ic7fzpc.cn/`). Existing sites previously added using Punycode will now display correctly. Feedback is welcomed in the Webmaster Help Group.\n"],null,["# Register non-English domain names with Webmaster Tools\n\nMonday, August 27, 2007\n\n\nI'm happy to announce that Webmaster Tools is expanding support for webmasters outside of the\nEnglish-speaking world, by supporting\n[Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3490.txt).\nIDNA provides a way for site owners to have domains that go beyond the domain name system's\nlimitations of English letters and numbers. Prior to IDNA, Internet host names could only be in\nthe 26 letters of the English alphabet, the numbers 0-9, and the hyphen character. With IDNA\nsupport, you'll now be able to add your sites that use other character sets, and organize them\neasily on your Webmaster Tools Dashboard.\n\n\nLet's say you wanted to add `https://北京大学.cn/` (Peking University) to your Webmaster\nTools account before we launched IDNA support. If you typed that in to the \"Add Site\" box, you'd\nget back an error message that looks like this:\n\n\nSome webmasters discovered a workaround. Internally, IDNA converts nicely encoded\n`https://北京大学.cn/` to a format called\n[Punycode](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3492.txt),\nwhich looks like `https://xn--1lq90ic7fzpc.cn/`. This allowed them to diagnose and view\ninformation about their site, but it looked pretty ugly. Also, if they had more than one IDNA\nsite, you can imagine it would be pretty hard to tell them apart.\n\n\nSince we now support IDNA throughout Webmaster Tools, all you need to do is type in the name of\nyour site, and we will add it correctly. Here is what it looks like if you attempt to add\n`https://北京大学.cn/` to your account:\n\n\nIf you are one of the webmasters who discovered the workaround previously (that is, you have had\nsites listed in your account that look like `https://xn--1lq90ic7fzpc.cn/`), those sites\nwill now automatically display correctly.\n\n\nWe'd love to hear your questions and feedback on this new feature; you can post in the\n[Google Webmaster Tools](https://support.google.com/webmasters/community)\nsection of our Webmaster Help Group. We'd also appreciate suggestions for other ways we can\nimprove our international support.\n\nWritten by Trevor Foucher, Webmaster Tools Team"]]
