A look at .uk registrations by Alexa score

[Edwin]

I took the data for the top 1,000,000 sites (as measured by Alexa.com), stripped out just the .co.uk entries and looked at how many had the corresponding .uk registered.

The results were very interesting. There was a near-linear decrease in the % of .uk domains registered as the sites got smaller/less popular.

Here's a graph of the results. As you can see, the very busy sites (low Alexa scores) have correspondingly large numbers of .uk already registered. However the % quickly drops as the sites get less important.

Here's the raw data behind the graph...

All data as of 16 June 2014

Alexa 1-1,000
10 .co.uk domains, 6 .uk registered (60%)

Alexa 1,001-3,000
17 .co.uk domains, 6 .uk registered (35%)

Alexa 3,001-5,000
20 .co.uk domains, 4 .uk registered (20%)

Alexa 5,001-10,000
57 .co.uk domains, 18 .uk registered (31%)

Alexa 10,001-20,000
101 .co.uk domains, 16 .uk registered (16%)

Alexa 20,001-40,000
191 .co.uk domains, 29 .uk registered (15%)

Alexa 40,001-60,000
206 .co.uk domains, 26 .uk registered (12.5%)

Alexa 60,001-80,000
217 .co.uk domains, 23 .uk registered (10.5%)

Alexa 80,001-100,000
263 .co.uk domains, 26 .uk registered (10%)

Alexa 100,001-150,000
607 .co.uk domains, 46 .uk registered (7.5%)

Alexa 150,001-200,000
706 .co.uk domains, 61 .uk registered (8.5%)

Alexa 200,001-250,000
744 .co.uk domains, 52 .uk registered (7%)

Alexa 250,001-300,000
795 .co.uk domains, 50 .uk registered (6%)

Alexa 300,001-400,000
1,683 .co.uk domains, 102 .uk registered (6%)

Alexa 400,001-500,000
1,795 .co.uk domains, 101 .uk registered (5.5%)

Alexa 500,001-600,000
1,863 .co.uk domains, 104 .uk registered (5.5%)

Alexa 600,001-700,000
1,866 .co.uk domains, 87 .uk registered (4.5%)

Alexa 700,001-800,000
1,892 .co.uk domains, 66 .uk registered (3.5%)

Alexa 800,001-900,000
2013 .co.uk domains, 79 .uk registered (4%)

Alexa 900,001-1,000,000
1,892 .co.uk domains, 66 .uk registered (3.5%)

 

[SF]

Hi Edwin so in simple terms what does this mean?

 

[Edwin]

Hi Edwin so in simple terms what does this mean?

It means the bigger the site, the earlier the mover i.e. the more likely they are to have registered their .uk already (not surprising, but the data PROVES it). The biggest sites on the UK web are already well on their way to securing their matching .uk domains after only 6 days of .uk availability. The smaller sites, well, the vast majority (90%++) have not yet done so.

I would also guesstimate that the numbers for the .co.uk domains not in Alexa's 1,000,000 top domains are unlikely to be better than the lower end of the data table I posted i.e. about 3.5-4% of .uk registered.

So if you use that very rough low-end figure across the whole UK namespace, it would suggest about 350,000-400,000 .uk domains have been registered so far.

That definitely looks a bit generous, so adjust downward by your own fiddle factor as you like. But it's at least an "order of magnitude" estimate that is supportable by data, even in a tangential way.

 

[SF]

Thats very good data and explained so I can understand well done!

From this I will try and grab as many .uks now as possible.

 

[foz]

.uk large website use = more eyeballs = forced awareness = quicker uptake.

 

[SF]

Foz makes a good point!

 

[ian]

Great data there, interesting to see, though no actual evidence to confirm they are using the .uk though, unless I'm missing something.

I have a website which is ranked (just checked) by Alexa between position and 4000 and 5000 (so not to confirm what it is ) and I've not bought the .uk yet, as I see little point unless the search results are not damaged to making such a change.

Plus as someone else said, many are still confused by the .uk and why they don't have to add .co in front of it.

 

[diablo]

Edwin, you truly are a legend!

 

[Edwin]

Great data there, interesting to see, though no actual evidence to confirm they are using the .uk though, unless I'm missing something.

I have a website which is ranked (just checked) by Alexa between position and 4000 and 5000 (so not to confirm what it is ) and I've not bought the .uk yet, as I see little point unless the search results are not damaged to making such a change.

Plus as someone else said, many are still confused by the .uk and why they don't have to add .co in front of it.

Sorry, I wasn't claiming they're USING it yet. Just to make that clear. All the data shows is who has REGISTERED the .uk.

 

[Murray]

Sorry, I wasn't claiming they're USING it yet. Just to make that clear. All the data shows is who has REGISTERED the .uk.

If you made all the .uks into links and put them online somewhere, you could use xenu to crawl them and draw up how many have sites on/301/or nothing.

 

[Retired_Member42]

It could also just mean that more popular sites are more proactive, have deeper pockets etc. Without usage it's pretty meaningless.

 

[Edwin]

If you made all the .uks into links and put them online somewhere, you could use xenu to crawl them and draw up how many have sites on/301/or nothing.

Ah, you're anticipating my plan for later this week Got Xenu on the desktop...

 

[Retired_Member42]

You don't need to crawl them as such, you can use get_headers to loop through and grab 301/302/200 etc

http://www.php.net//manual/en/function.get-headers.php

 

[Retired_Member38]

It could also just mean that more popular sites are more proactive, have deeper pockets etc. Without usage it's pretty meaningless.

Agreed, I'm struggling to care if ebay or Amazon has bought their .uk but not using it.

It would be far more interesting to see which sites are either building out their .uk as a standalone site, or even better which have redirected their .co.uk to the .uk. Perhaps even stats on which are redirecting in the other way. Although that might just be a temporary solution of having the .uk resolve, rather than an indication of which domain they'll be using long term...

 

[PanzerWagon]

I don't think I have seen much useful info on .UK yet that is worth retaining.

That search query Edwin posted for seeing sites indexed in Google was pretty interesting, but all I see is .uk sites that have just been moved from the .co.uk to escape a penalty. If they were ranking fine on their original extension then I doubt they'd have even registered it.

Has anyone got anything interesting to report on .uk at all?

Other than some half baked press releases about companies moving, a poor attempt at promoting it from Nominet and a few users trying to drum up conversation here it's a non entity really. Maybe we should just forget about it and revisit in a year? See if anything has happened.

 

[PanzerWagon]

Agreed, I'm struggling to care if ebay or Amazon has bought their .uk but not using it.

It would be far more interesting to see which sites are either building out their .uk as a standalone site, or even better which have redirected their .co.uk to the .uk. Perhaps even stats on which are redirecting in the other way. Although that might just be a temporary solution of having the .uk resolve, rather than an indication of which domain they'll be using long term...

Which one did you decide on on your .uk Poll thread? Or still undecided?

 

[fabpack]

We have a site in the 150,000 band, have registered the .uk but done nothing with it like most

 

[Retired_Member38]

Which one did you decide on on your .uk Poll thread? Or still undecided?

Undecided. There is going to be a fair bit of development work to do and the site is live on the .co.uk while we work on it, but set to noindex. So we can choose at some point over the next few months of development, before we actually start promoting it. The size of the job has massively increased with a few new features we decided to add, so its giving me a few months more breathing room to actually decide.

I'm sort of swaying towards .co.uk.... but if any major players (bbc, big newspapers) changed to .uk I think I might do the same.

 

[PanzerWagon]

Undecided. There is going to be a fair bit of development work to do and the site is live on the .co.uk while we work on it, but set to noindex. So we can choose at some point over the next few months of development, before we actually start promoting it. The size of the job has massively increased with a few new features we decided to add, so its giving me a few months more breathing room to actually decide.

I'm sort of swaying towards .co.uk.... but if any major players (bbc, big newspapers) changed to .uk I think I might do the same.

Gonna be interesting to see if any big sites actually change. If I had to guess I'd say no. There aren't many viable reasons to really do so, at least none I can think of. Any site migration is fraught with danger too.

Newspapers on .co.uk are more likely to change to .com like the Guardian to try generate pageviews from the US I think. Can't see them going to .UK.