Question: .uk & .co.uk

[Andreas B.]

Hi There,

some time ago, it must be 2 years or so, I read that all co.uk domain owners could replace their .co.uk domain with .uk
(it was reserved to them).

So, my question is:
Is that time period over now?

(I do not think that .co.uk and .uk merged together, did it? - I mean, that all co.uk owners now also would have .uk automatically, and pay only for 1 domain?)

 

[MadAboutDomains]

You're quite right, there was a period of many years that .co.uk owners had a right of registration for their equivalent .UK name.

A lot of people, including big corporations didn't take up the opportunity and there was a big drop and fight for them at the end.

Sadly nominet who run .UK didn't merge the names together, they let people register them separately after the right if registration period ended, probably so they could double their revenue from renewals in the space.

Unfortunately because if this we now have a namespace where you really need to own and pay for both the .UK and the .Co.Uk but only one domain has any worth and it's still the original .co.uk. .UK names confuse people and everyone defaults to .Co.uk still.

I hope that explains a bit about the situation.

 

[Andreas B.]

You're quite right, there was a period of many years that .co.uk owners had a right of registration for their equivalent .UK name.

A lot of people, including big corporations didn't take up the opportunity and there was a big drop and fight for them at the end.

Sadly nominet who run .UK didn't merge the names together, they let people register them separately after the right if registration period ended, probably so they could double their revenue from renewals in the space.

Unfortunately because if this we now have a namespace where you really need to own and pay for both the .UK and the .Co.Uk but only one domain has any worth and it's still the original .co.uk. .UK names confuse people and everyone defaults to .Co.uk still.

I hope that explains a bit about the situation.

Totally, thanks!

 

[tiletalk]

i dropped most of my uk domains because of this only have 3 now which i may develop in future.

 

[redemo]

Simple fact is most businesses (from high street to one-man band) in U.K. use co.uk (or dot com) and not .uk so not wanting to confuse people I would stay well clear of .uk except in two specific scenarios. A super popular one-word .uk with massive search vol and C.P.C. or a clever word hack with massive search volume and and C.P.C. such as visit dot uk. Also .uk domain names don't tend to sell for xxxxx with the notable exceptions this year of public.uk (sold for £ 110000 along with public.co.uk ) and built.uk (sold for £ 12050 ).