IT.COM

sales Another UK Domain Name Pair May Have Sold For Six Figures

Spaceship Spaceship
It appears likely that the pair of domain names public.uk and public.co.uk have recently sold in a package transaction for £110,000 or about $156,000 USD.

Although the sale is not shown on NameBio at time of writing, it was recently added to the list of highest value .uk sales maintained at BrandWise.co.uk. BrandWise UK also mentioned the likely sale in a tweet.

I do not know who is the buyer of public.uk and public.co.uk, or the plan for the domain names. The names did not resolve to an operating website when I checked. Of course, they have just recently changed hands.

DomainIQ shows update of Whois records for the two domain names on May 24 and May 26, 2021, indicating that the sale was probably completed about two weeks ago.

Past Use

The domain name public.co.uk is just over 17 years old, first registered on April 19, 2004. The public.uk domain name was registered in 2019, during the period when the owner of a .co.uk domain name could claim the matching .uk. I have been told that the recent purchaser was most interested in the .uk part of this package deal.

In the past the domain name public.co.uk was used for redirection to a UK shopping portal during the early 2000’s according to web.archive.org records. It never seems to have had significant solo use.

Comparison Sales

This would be the highest value reported sale in UK in 2021. If we regard the total price as a single sale, it would become the 25th highest sale in any extension during 2021 so far, at least of the sales recorded in NameBio.

The highest value .co.uk sale in 2021 listed in NameBio is rely.co.uk that sold for $35,000 in February at Nidoma.

All time, the highest value .co.uk sale listed in NameBio is the private sale of cruises.co.uk for $1,099,798 in 2008. Interestingly, that also was part of a pair of domain names, with the singular selling for the same amount at the same time. Therefore that total sale package was worth more than $2 million.

Last year I reported on NamePros a sale of the pair IT.uk and IT.co.uk for a package price of about $242,000 USD.

Word Public In Domain Names

I had a look at how the word public is used in some of the other major extensions. The domain public.com is developed as a social stock portfolio site. The domain name public.io is a technology business aimed at public services. The .net, .co and .org are all currently parked or for sale.

According to dofo advanced search, the word public is registered in 337 extensions, with 131 actively for sale. I believe that some of the ones listed for sale are premium names offered by the registry, however.

DotDB show 288 exact match registered, and 199,584 associated domain names, that is domain names in all extensions that include public. Clearly public is a very popular and versatile term, and a Google search showed over 8.8 billion search results.

I decided there was sufficient information to publish this story, but it should be noted that at time of writing the sale has not been listed at NameBio or DNJournal, and therefore should be regarded as tentative.

If you have additional information or updates on the sale, please share it in the comments.


I would like to express appreciation to a source who alerted me to this probable sale. Also, thanks to all of the information sources and databases used to obtain the comparison information noted above.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Nice reporting Bob! Love those .uk domains :)
 
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Thanks Bob !! I find these .uk hard to sell ,even if you own the co.uk .
They still seem to prefer the latter .
buymyplace.uk
buymyplace.co.uk
moonchaser.uk
moonchaser.co.uk
tycoontommy.uk
tycoontommy.co.uk
 
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Thanks, Bob.

From my little experience, the UK market isn't as robust as other cctld markets like DE. Names sell slowly with those UK extensions.

Glad the seller got payday on his investments
 
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Thanks Bob !! I find these .uk hard to sell ,even if you own the co.uk .
They still seem to prefer the latter .
buymyplace.uk
buymyplace.co.uk
Buyahouse.co.uk would be a nice alternative

Thanks for sharing the sale, I like .co.uk names.
 
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Interesting that the buyer was keen on the .uk version rather than the more popular .co.uk extension. (public name)
From a purely international standpoint the .uk makes more sense.
Thanks for the thread info 😎👍
 
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Wow, interesting. Appreciate the data as always Bob
 
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Very useful info. Thanks a lot!
 
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Thanks, Bob.

From my little experience, the UK market isn't as robust as other cctld markets like DE. Names sell slowly with those UK extensions.

Glad the seller got payday on his investments

The UK market is very strong the CCTLD market is on fire :O)

but co.uk is still king
 
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Thanks Bob. Interesting read.

I have FreeVideos.co.uk and .uk
Have thought about listing them at DomainLore, but some of the final sale prices are very low.

Oil.uk for example sold for only £1.5k recently !

Anybody know of alternatives to DomainLore for UK domain name auctions?
 
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Thanks Bob. Interesting read.

I have FreeVideos.co.uk and .uk
Have thought about listing them at DomainLore, but some of the final sale prices are very low.

Oil.uk for example sold for only £1.5k recently !

Anybody know of alternatives to DomainLore for UK domain name auctions?
It's because it's .UK. Nobody wants .UK cause of all of the investment has been in .co.uk over the years.
 
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Thanks Bob. Interesting read.

I have FreeVideos.co.uk and .uk
Have thought about listing them at DomainLore, but some of the final sale prices are very low.

Oil.uk for example sold for only £1.5k recently !

Anybody know of alternatives to DomainLore for UK domain name auctions?

That’s a domainer auction platform you will never get good money on auction I can’t see freevideos going for much anyway.
 
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as i am based in the uk etc and started out buying

.co.uk

and

.uk

etc and i thought i had some good domains etc but they are only any good in the uk etc but .uk is better than .co.uk but those with .co.uk domains have yetto realise it but no doubt they will do when they eventually try to buy the .uk that they refused to buy only to realise it is no longer for sale lol

but i much prefer buying
two keyword .com s
and
one word gtlds
etc

but for those that buy

.co.uk and .uk domains etc

a uk domain name website

interv ention. co. uk

has about 17 pages of .co.uk and .uk website addresses to buy
 
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You can still find some de registered dictionary one-word co.uk names and MANY de registered and un registered .uk names. I think this significantly devalues the commercial aftermarket value for both co.uk and .uk name sales. As for finding two words with massive search volume in co.uk and .uk. Forgetaboutit! Easier than peeling a banana. By the way @Bob Hawkes your research is really spot on. Domaining community is super lucky to have you.
 
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Digital.(co).(uk) Any opinion
 
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I only have 98.uk and 98.co.uk but never had more than some X.XXX offer.
It is good to see that the market is growing
 
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how about org,uk?
good or not?

which one better : .UK or org.uk ?
 
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