UK geo domains

twostepsbehind · Jul 1, 2019

Hello,

What would be a sensible price to ask for to sell geo domains? - serving a populations of 25k to 50k

(.uk domains)

Thanks

Adam H · Jul 1, 2019

I think it massively depends on the geo and whether its hyper local such as a big town or city, or whether they are counties. County based geos, especially of the .uk I actually don't see as that valuable from a resell point of view, for example I'd love to get hold of a few surrounding counties, but they wouldnt be for projects which could justify a sensible outlay, so id rather use a longer tail domain if it meant the expensve.

Big City Geo's on the other hand, easier to monetise, have that prestiege so could be snapped up for bragging rights and monitisation. Obviously just my opinion. I'm sure others disagree, especially those with big geo portfolios

stitchbob · Jul 1, 2019

The .uk geos have one advantage over their co.uk counterparts - managed well, they can become an SLD in their own right. For a directory site, that means your customers can have example.brighton.uk which might have more appeal to certain clients than co.uk, especially if you're working with local branches of a national company, or a name that's already taken.

I've had my eye on some of them for exactly that purposes. However, I'm not invested enough in the idea to pay the kind of money that GEO's usually command, so I'm just going to take my chances. Obviously I'll be throwing my hat into the ring for Manchester.

diablo · Jul 1, 2019

stitchbob said:
The .uk geos have one advantage over their co.uk counterparts - managed well, they can become an SLD in their own right. ...

Better check as I'm exhausted and not thinking straight, but my understanding was .uk domains could not be used in this way.

Ryan Ewen · Jul 2, 2019

Trauiner said:
.UK geo domains hold pretty much no value for resale. If you have a lot of .UK geo domains, there's a reason for that. No-one wanted them.

People in the UK are truly accustomed to typing in .co.uk - Could someone build a business and rely on google type-in traffic for a .UK domain, yes. However, they're always at a high risk that the .co.uk domain holder can come in and wipe out their business and become the authority website with relative ease.

Disagree - the market will change once people realise the SEO benefits of .uk versus .co.uk - this may be accelerated if google.co.uk becomes google.uk - similar to nominet.

We have split test 100+ domains and .uk outperforms by a mile.

just saying!

stitchbob · Jul 2, 2019

diablo said:
Better check as I'm exhausted and not thinking straight, but my understanding was .uk domains could not be used in this way.

I'm not aware of any such restrictions on what you can do with .uk domains specifically. Bear in mind I'm not talking about setting yourself up as a registrar and selling hosting etc for subdomains of your .uk, but as far as I'm aware, there's nothing stopping you setting up manchester.uk as a directory site, and setting up subdomains like northernquarter.manchester.uk or even more specific ones like affleckspalace.manchester.uk

martin-s · Jul 2, 2019

Robert Smith said:
We have split test 100+ domains and .uk outperforms by a mile.

Go on, tell us more. Because this goes against 99% of what I believe in.

dee · Jul 2, 2019

Robert Smith said:
We have split test 100+ domains and .uk outperforms by a mile.

Can you expand please ? This sounds pretty interesting

Ryan Ewen · Jul 2, 2019

dee said:
Can you expand please ? This sounds pretty interesting

We purchased a lot of domains (perhaps 50-100) and popped 2,500 words on each site (a different 2,500 for .uk and .co.uk)
.uk always outranked co.uk

We also tested an aged domain name versus a new .uk version -
An example is here: https://www.taxifinance.uk - the .uk is 20 ish years old

.uk was around top 20 for first year of launch. .co.uk version was 150 in google. Since then we redirected the .co.uk domain to the .uk.

We have 500 websites in 80 countries around the world and .uk outranks .co.uk in every situation.

Ryan Ewen · Jul 2, 2019

Trauiner said:
.UK geo domains hold pretty much no value for resale. If you have a lot of .UK geo domains, there's a reason for that. No-one wanted them.

People in the UK are truly accustomed to typing in .co.uk - Could someone build a business and rely on google type-in traffic for a .UK domain, yes. However, they're always at a high risk that the .co.uk domain holder can come in and wipe out their business and become the authority website with relative ease.

Buy the hype, sell the news.

You are correct - they are hard to sell. Acquire them now cheap and you will see the value as the market changes

twostepsbehind · Jul 2, 2019

Plus with all the new gTLDs, simpler, easier to digest domains will come out on top

As a domainer, .co.uk looks obsolete now...

Ryan Ewen · Jul 2, 2019

Trauiner said:
No offence but you're either talking out your backside because you want to sell the .UK domains you have or you have literally no experience in split testing to read the results properly. Can you provide any in-depth case study? If the domain extension was as powerful as you say, all the big .co.uk sites would be changing to .UK as their primary.

They're not because it makes no difference to them.

Stop spreading fake and pure false information.

Great - so you have split test domains yourself to have such a strong opinion. Didn't think so. Probably some 60 year hater. Get a life

Ryan Ewen · Jul 2, 2019

I said it because that is my experience - which i have seen with my own eyes. I don't resell domains so have nothing to gain from saying this. I have personally built 500+ websites - you can take what i say with a pinch of salt but there is no agenda

Adam H · Jul 2, 2019

Don't poke the beast Robert, more often than not "research" is best kept to yourself.

Ryan Ewen · Jul 2, 2019

Adam H said:
Don't poke the beast Robert, more often than not "research" is best kept to yourself.

This is a place for sharing information - i have a job and am very successful - but thanks for the tip

Adam H · Jul 2, 2019

Just to note, I wasn't being condecending.

Ben Thomas · Jul 2, 2019

Can I just add, suffix is irrelevant when it comes to SEO, as long as it isn't super difficult to type, look like spam, hyphens etc. the only thing that truly matters, is CONTENT.

People are indoctrinated to believe .co.uk will rank better than .uk, wrong. You're just not seeing .uk ranking (much) yet as nobody has adopted it. And that my friends, is the big question.

Will it be adopted, as much as the .co.uk?

I bet if I took a competitive .uk domain now and put a website on it, focused 12 weeks intensively creating quality SEO articles and optimising the site every single day, it would be ranking just fine.

Any SEO company worth their salt would tell you exactly the same thing. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2015/07/googles-handling-of-new-top-level.html

Adam H · Jul 2, 2019

inteldigital said:
the only thing that truly matters, is CONTENT.

Spoken like every 2012 ghost writer whom are now under the trendy guise of "content marketers"....because they can.

Ben Thomas · Jul 2, 2019

Adam H said:
Spoken like every 2012 ghost writer whom are now under the trendy guise of "content marketers"....because they can.

Tell me I'm wrong?

Adam H · Jul 2, 2019

Your wrong...content alone, like any other variable alone is useless. Doesn't matter if you've got the best content in the world, if your site doent have the authority to maintain and follow that content through, it's never going to be seen (or won't be as prominant as it really could be). SEO hasnt really changed, trends come and go and some factors change weight ( such as content ) but ultimately the basic's still apply.