diff --git src/java/org/apache/nutch/indexer/IndexUtil.java src/java/org/apache/nutch/indexer/IndexUtil.java
index be7c952..eefd72a 100644
--- src/java/org/apache/nutch/indexer/IndexUtil.java
+++ src/java/org/apache/nutch/indexer/IndexUtil.java
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@ import org.apache.nutch.scoring.ScoringFilters;
 import org.apache.nutch.storage.WebPage;
 import org.apache.nutch.util.StringUtil;
 import org.apache.nutch.util.TableUtil;
+import org.apache.nutch.util.URLUtil;
 
 /**
  * Utility to create an indexed document from a webpage.  
@@ -37,6 +38,8 @@ public class IndexUtil {
   private IndexingFilters filters;
   private ScoringFilters scoringFilters;
   
+  public static final String IDNA_ACE_prefix = "xn--";
+  
   public IndexUtil(Configuration conf) {
     filters = new IndexingFilters(conf);
     scoringFilters = new ScoringFilters(conf);
@@ -68,6 +71,9 @@ public class IndexUtil {
     }
     
     String url = TableUtil.unreverseUrl(key);
+    
+    if(url.contains(IDNA_ACE_prefix))
+       url = URLUtil.toUNICODE(url);
 
     if (LOG.isDebugEnabled()) {
       LOG.debug("Indexing URL: " + url);
diff --git src/plugin/urlnormalizer-basic/src/java/org/apache/nutch/net/urlnormalizer/basic/BasicURLNormalizer.java src/plugin/urlnormalizer-basic/src/java/org/apache/nutch/net/urlnormalizer/basic/BasicURLNormalizer.java
index 97ab75b..2c80244 100644
--- src/plugin/urlnormalizer-basic/src/java/org/apache/nutch/net/urlnormalizer/basic/BasicURLNormalizer.java
+++ src/plugin/urlnormalizer-basic/src/java/org/apache/nutch/net/urlnormalizer/basic/BasicURLNormalizer.java
@@ -20,13 +20,16 @@ package org.apache.nutch.net.urlnormalizer.basic;
 import java.net.URL;
 import java.net.MalformedURLException;
 
+
+
 // Commons Logging imports
 import org.slf4j.Logger;
 import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
 
 // Nutch imports
 import org.apache.nutch.net.URLNormalizer;
-
+import org.apache.nutch.util.URLUtil;
+import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;
 import org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configuration;
 import org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configured;
 import org.apache.oro.text.regex.*;
@@ -91,6 +94,9 @@ public class BasicURLNormalizer extends Configured implements URLNormalizer {
             return urlString;
 
         urlString = urlString.trim();                 // remove extra spaces
+        
+        if(!StringUtils.isAsciiPrintable(urlString))
+           urlString = URLUtil.toASCII(urlString);
 
         URL url = new URL(urlString);