| Best Practices: How to Register an Internationalized Domain |
 Internationalized domain names (IDN) are foreign language COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ and .TW domain names that include non-ASCII characters. At DownDoggy, you can register an internationalized domain name using the native language characters or standard punycode character format. If you enter the language characters, we convert it to punycode and register the punycode version with the registry.
Just because you own a domain name’s English version, does not mean you own its non-English counterpart. If you or your customers do business in other countries, it may be wise to register the equivalent domain(s) in native languages for those countries, making it easier for international customers to reach your business web sites.
At DownDoggy, you can register domain names in over 100 native languages (non-ASCII characters) such as Chinese, Japanese and Arabic or in standard ASCII character format. IDNs may be represented as a series of “Western” characters and/or numbers instead of using actual native language characters. We allow searches using either method and display both representations our search results. For example: пустыня (Russian word for "desert") is equivalent to xn--m1adged4c3a in ASCII. Both are searchable at DownDoggy.
Viewing an internationalized domain name is possible in both Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 browsers. Whilst most languages are preloaded into these browsers, there are instances when an additional download is required to view a specific language. To view characters in an internationalized domain, you must adjust your language settings in your web browser. (If you can't see the characters, you may need to install a foreign language pack.)
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