Notable .UK websites

Admin · Sep 16, 2016

I thought we could grow a list of notable .UK websites to see how it is being adopted by major companies / brands... who wants to start?

monaghan · Sep 16, 2016

Not sure how notable, but we had a pizza leaflet the other week perfect-pizza.uk, the family thought I was bonkers for focusing on the domain name rather than the pizza!

martin-s · Sep 16, 2016

bl.uk is the only one I can think of

grantw · Sep 16, 2016

I recently noticed Heart Internet had switched over to .uk

Admin · Sep 16, 2016

Decent blog post explaining why they did it, its over a year old but I hadnt read it before... https://www.heartinternet.uk/blog/why-we-moved-to-uk/

martin-s · Sep 16, 2016

Can't wait to read the "Why we moved back" post

ian · Sep 16, 2016

Ermmm, notable ones, I really can't think of any, worrying isn't it!

Admin · Sep 16, 2016

I cannot think of any, there must be some large sites on .UK....surely !?

ian · Sep 16, 2016

Nominet.uk

Skinner · Sep 18, 2016

Didn't Heart moved because of penalty, I'm sure I read that somewhere.

o2, seem to be using o2.uk on mobile devices. I see the odd small bussiness using them,, but then I see lots of .US and .CO domains being used on the high street too.

yorkshiredomainer · Sep 23, 2016

Domainlore.uk is a .uk! Also, the Police and various government depts have used it since before it was available for public registration; NHS.uk and MOD.uk for example.

monaghan · Sep 26, 2016

yorkshiredomainer said:
Domainlore.uk is a .uk!

Hardly a notable domain, suspect 99% of users are in the domain industry.

Also, the Police and various government depts have used it since before it was available for public registration; NHS.uk and MOD.uk for example.

A number of the original .uk top levels were already in use outside of Nominet control (as part of the original .uk delegations), so again not really what the thread is asking.

I guess from the lack of posts, nobody's really found any notable use of a .uk domain suggesting what we all predicted before the changes. They are just another domain to add to the list to buy when looking at brand protection.

Edwin · Sep 26, 2016

Only one of the busiest sites on the web (as per Alexa data) is using their .uk for their primary site (it's a web hosting and domain registration firm) even though 56% of the Alexa Top 20,000 sites have registered the .uk to match their .co.uk!

That's 114 out of the 204 sites which feature within the 20,000 top sites in the world which have taken up the .uk. There's only been one new .uk registration amongst those 204 sites in the last 4 months, so the on-going takeup is glacial.

Here's what those 114 sites are doing with their .uk domains:

blank page: 4 (3.5%)
does not resolve: 44 (38.6%)
official site: 1 (0.9%)
separate .uk site: 4 (3.5%)
redirects to .com: 4 (3.5%)
redirects to .co.uk: 32 (28.1%)
registrar holding page: 25 (21.9%)

Blossom · Sep 29, 2016

admin said:
Decent blog post explaining why they did it, its over a year old but I hadnt read it before... https://www.heartinternet.uk/blog/why-we-moved-to-uk/

Thanks, I wrote that! Feels like forever ago

Skinner said:
Didn't Heart moved because of penalty, I'm sure I read that somewhere.

If you did read that, it's not true

DomainM · Jun 29, 2017

Thought I'd bump this thread. Any new additions.

business.hsbc.uk

Maybe a cheat as they've used it for a subdomain.

freddy · Jun 30, 2017

maybe the promotion of nominet next 2 month will motivate a few more to take the .uk for free, there will be for sure some that move. Instead of moving my hosting.co.uk to .uk I build an additionally site.

DomainM · Jun 30, 2017

What promotion?

freddy · Jun 30, 2017

last month I was told by 2 nominet Representatives (channel account manager) that in July and August .co.uk holders can register their .uk for free if they apply for 2 years. It was on a little Domain Conference in Germany.

Edwin · Jun 30, 2017

freddy said:
last month I was told by 2 nominet Representatives (channel account manager) that in July and August .co.uk holders can register their .uk for free if they apply for 2 years. It was on a little Domain Conference in Germany.

Covered in much more detail here
https://www.acorndomains.co.uk/threads/right-of-registration-promotion.147235/

ian · Jun 30, 2017

It is available to Nominet members. You can sign up for 2 free years of .uk until September I think. Nice gesture, but ultimately only gives you a couple of months 'if' you didn't plan exercising your rights until June 2019 anyway, which most won't. I doubt a free promotion is suddenly going to see a surge of companies deciding to switch to a .uk for the sake of what would have been a few £ registration anyway.