Although domains with accented characters have been available for some time, it may not be widely known that they exist. Accented and unaccented domain names are independent of each other, so it is possible that cafe.uk and café.uk will lead to completely different content.
What Are Accented Domains Good For?
An accented domain is good for exactly the same thing as an unaccented domain: it drives traffic to your website. Although many people are unfamiliar with accented domain names, search engines and browsers still treat them the same. Accented domains are often reserved to prevent competitors from using them, or to ensure that the site is accessible to those who type the accented form in the browser address bar.
You should not choose an accented domain if your audience will only visit your site from a country that does not use accented characters, although with IDN your domain will be accessible from anywhere. Also, for your start-up business, you should reserve the unaccented version first, so that you own it.
What Is IDN?
IDN stands for Internationalised Domain Name. This is the computer code for accented or other special characters. Using café.uk as an example, it would look like this:
xn--caf-dma.uk
You don’t need to remember the code above, browsers and applications usually recognise accented characters automatically. This format is used so that programs and applications using different character sets can clearly identify which domain they are from.