Is there any scenario where .co.uk wins and puts this debate to bed? Not in my opinion, at best it will always have .uk hanging over it. There is a scenario where .uk wins though and we never here about .uk again.
Here's the facts: 1. .uk is becoming increasingly more popular The uptake of .UK domain names has increased exponentially inside the domaining community. I don't know if it's just me, but I have seen more and more companies using .uk domains. Perhaps it's because they are now available to everyone. Who knows. 2. .co.uk is longer and tired If it's to be said, .co.uk is a longer version of a domain name. It makes marketing it look ugly next to a .uk. It looks less appealing on a business card, it looks less appealing in an address bar. It looks bad in comparison. The only thing holding .uk back from overtaking .co.uk, is the fact that the older generation recognises it as more official. But here's a reality check – that's the old generation. The new generation of startups, and whiz kids of AI companies and bootstrapped, basement-office, high-tech app development startups see .uk as a better alternative – because it is.
You mean more popular than it was but thats not more popular than .co.uk. You know....i agree with you, I like .UK BUT every end user that enquires and buys my domains is asking and buying .co.uk's. They dont even ask about the .UK...you know why? Because they dont know it exists. There's another fact.
And that matters, why? Personally, as someone who is comfortable owning only a .uk for their brand, I really don't think owning the .co.uk matters. There are several prominent examples of this, not least the aforementioned royal.uk
I'm confident in the fact that I can speak and market my brand properly. If they type in .co.uk and find a recruitment business, they're going to know something is wrong, buddy. What you're saying doesn't make sense in the real world. Those who can't read a URL properly, probably aren't that interested in it anyway. Secondly, my business is outbound sales 100% at present, with any inbound sales being only by chance. This may change in future, but as I say, I'm not concerned. brightwork.com is unclear about what it sells, looks to be some sort of SaaS option. the .co.uk is owned by a recruitment agency. I don't think I'm going to have much competition, IN MY INDUSTRY, for search traffic. I think we can coexist just fine in the same space. I will agree that owning the .com and .co.uk would be nice, but I'd still operate from a .uk given that chance.
Keep feeling like I'm missing something. If you had a .co.uk portfolio then Nominet offered 5 years to grab all your .uk's. Any you didn't was free expression. All the non domainers who didn't bother with their .uk ROR's the same. So there's some to my understanding unknown percentage of .uk's that are not matched with their .co.uk's but this outcome was the free expression of all who partook. Registrars bent over backwards messaging and emailing .co.uk holders to reg their .uk's and some went a bit further than that. Those domains are not beholden to guarantee entrepreneurs huge profits are they? Fact they dropped means they were unwanted in most cases. Whatever you gain from them is just a bonus. We don't see the huge number of Prime .uk's safely betrothed forever to their .co.uk counterparts and many never to be parted. And even when they are parted it's domainers selling them as separate concerns and creating further entropy. We complain about ourselves. Too many top Generic domains were simply hoarded. Many will never achieve the promise many once thought they would because online thinking processes have changed and brandables are second nature to the public. Hash tags, social media accounts, all challenge domain names for digitally locating things. Domaining is improving but not so sure anymore there's any reason why it's going to get bigger. Technology just flows around the domain hoarding.
I have been here since about 2016, so yes. Relatively new in that sense. But I don't think that matters.
I think they'll end up coexisting. I'm a fan of the UK for all the reasons mentioned previously, and if both were launched side by side I suspect it'd be no competition. You'll never get rid of one over the other though because there is such a huge legacy of co.uk sites running that will never go away. I think uk will just slowly creep up and become an "as well as" norm. I guess if you have generics, then the co.uk has slight advantage at moment as public will currently default to co.uk
@Trauiner Probably true. Just bumped into the site yesterday as evangelist.uk is dropping today and I wondered what the plural was doing.
Try and look at it from a general member of the public and not someone that has invested £ in .uk names, should give you the answer.
I guess the point there is about how cheaply can you buy a premium or reasonable .UK. Even if it's dirt cheap, is it money down the drain? Having said that, I am surprised (and I probably shouldn't be) at how cheaply some quite nice .UK domains go for on DomainLore or Flip Clearly, I like the .UK but I do see that it has a long road ahead of it with an uncertain destination
If I was using a brandable domain for a site, and hadn't got the pair, then spending a few hundred quid on a UK Trade Mark is probably the best protection I could get against any later "pitch invasion" of my brand; valid for up to 20 years if you renew it. A TM would also, to varying degrees, potentially devalue the other one of the pair by limiting it's use. Personally, I wouldn't start a brand if I only had the .co.uk, but I would with just the .uk. Generics not so much use here.
The .co.uk was available to them for under $200. But they could not afford to spend more than their original offer of $20. I would have given them it for free but they were rude, and was the shady TV preacher type. I let the domain drop.
I'm going to add this anecdotally as I never compiled figures. 12 months+ ago we had to use both versions (co.uk/.uk) of one of our brands in concurrent PPC campaigns. Both used virtually the same ad text, keywords that were similar enough to give reliable results and over a hundred thousand clicks. The .uk's performance had a lower CTR and also lower on site conversion but the difference was marginal - a couple of % at most and certainly nothing that would put me off using a .uk domain. People genuinely don't seem to care what they click on. The branding confusion is another matter though - that does bother me.
I suppose you'd have to be pretty thick to start any kind of business you wanted to scale in the future only owning the .UK. I guess its ok for little private blog or something small. Imagine monster only launching on .UK and not .co.uk
I was thinking about this and agree with it to a point but the reality is that most businesses will never get to a stage that it matters either way.
Yes, I guess if it works it works you could say, maybe it's one of the reasons why they never get to that stage.
