For a new site: .UK or .CO.UK?

humble pie · Nov 29, 2015

can't see any reason not to use the .UK and 301 .co.uk

.co.uk is already looking old

newbie · Dec 1, 2015

humble pie said:
can't see any reason not to use the .UK and 301 .co.uk

.co.uk is already looking old

Does Google look to .uk and .co.uk equally? Is there any "weighting" between the extension that has been noticed?

Does domain age still play a part?

My .co.uk is aged 2009 and my .uk 2015.

It was not as simple as aesthetics after all!

At the start of this thread I would definitely have been .UK. Now, I am leaning very much towards .CO.UK with the 301's in place to make the switch in the future to .UK where necessary. If there are any ranking signals favouring domain age and/or extension then the .CO.UK becomes a no brainer.

Thank you all very much for your input.

ian · Dec 1, 2015

For a brand new site, .com all the way. Won't be cheap though!!!

newbie · Dec 1, 2015

ian-d said:
For a brand new site, .com all the way. Won't be cheap though!!!

.COM is simply not possible, I have no chance to get the LLL.com of my domain!

So it's .UK or .CO.UK only. My audience is UK based so .COM it's not so much an issue for me.

looks · Dec 1, 2015

Any new sites we do next year we will be doing them on the .uk, looks much better. Just 301 the .co.uk

newbie · Dec 8, 2015

Thanks for all your feedback.

We've put up a twitter poll, if you are a twitterer, please vote!

https://twitter.com/ukchelpdesk/status/674192209130987520

So far....

24% .UK
61% .CO.UK
15% - no change

I'm erring on .co.uk, will be interesting to see what twitter users feel about the issue!

Thanks again!

----

Update: Matt Cutts tweeted, he voted for the .co.uk

newbie · Dec 9, 2015

My twitter poll yielded a clear winner.

.CO.UK won with 60% of the vote - including Matt Cutts' vote.

https://twitter.com/ukchelpdesk/status/674192209130987520

So, UKC.co.uk it is. With 301 from old domain and UKC.uk to retain as much link juice as possible.

Thanks for all of your feedback!

Adam H · Dec 9, 2015

newbie said:
My twitter poll yielded a clear winner.

.CO.UK won with 60% of the vote - including Matt Cutts' vote.

https://twitter.com/ukchelpdesk/status/674192209130987520

So, UKC.co.uk it is. With 301 from old domain and UKC.uk to retain as much link juice as possible.

Thanks for all of your feedback!

Pity you didnt have the .com as that would have been my choice, not sure about a rebrand where UK mentioned in both TLD and domain when the domain is so short... Just my opinion though which means very little lol

Admin · Dec 9, 2015

I thought that too regarding the double 'UK'. Also, newbie you mention above that you could move to .uk in the future, well if you think thats likely you should do it now. Redirection doesnt send 100% of the link equity. Just throwing a spanner in....!

martin-s · Dec 9, 2015

Also worth bearing in mind that redirection should extend to setting up email aliases.

ian · Dec 9, 2015

I wouldn't use a domain with uk in the name as well as the extension. Just to throw the entire toolbox in....!

Avano Ltd · Dec 9, 2015

is there any correlation between click though rate with co.uk against .uk ? either organic or PPC..

newbie · Dec 9, 2015

AdamH said:
Pity you didnt have the .com as that would have been my choice, not sure about a rebrand where UK mentioned in both TLD and domain when the domain is so short... Just my opinion though which means very little lol

I'd love the .COM! Maybe something to work towards

newbie · Dec 9, 2015

admin said:
I thought that too regarding the double 'UK'. Also, newbie you mention above that you could move to .uk in the future, well if you think thats likely you should do it now. Redirection doesnt send 100% of the link equity. Just throwing a spanner in....!

The double UK seems more of an issue with the .UK extension, doesnt seem so significant with .CO.UK. I wonder if that was why votes were for the .CO.UK?

I don't want to read into Matt Cutts' vote too much, but it's hard to ignore that he went with the .co.uk. Might there be ranking signals in there to consider?

ian · Dec 9, 2015

newbie said:
The double UK seems more of an issue with the .UK extension, doesnt seem so significant with .CO.UK. I wonder if that was why votes were for the .CO.UK?

I would imagine this contributed to the end result, as I'd agree .co.uk works better with a "uk" worded domain. Can you do another poll but make the domain random/generic to see if the outcome is similar.

newbie · Dec 9, 2015

ian-d said:
I would imagine this contributed to the end result, as I'd agree .co.uk works better with a "uk" worded domain. Can you do another poll but make the domain random/generic to see if the outcome is similar.

For my particular case, .co.uk has come out on top, i'm not sure I can re-run the poll again, it may confuse/annoy my followers.

What is certain is the shorter name (both versions) was strongly preferred against the old longer hyphenated domain name by a ratio of 9 to 1.