.co.uk = British English...

[Edwin]

When you're considering whether to register a .co.uk domain or not, always think in terms of British English. This is even more essential if English is not your first language.

For example, US spellings ("honor", "color") and expressions ("sidewalk", "real estate", "attorney") are unlikely to appeal to UK buyers.

Similarly, words in languages other than English are unlikely to find a market unless they've already been "absorbed" into the English language through familiarity (e.g. "sushi").

Remember also that the names of people/places may be very widely searched in one country, yet almost nobody in the UK cares about them. For example, a first name could be in the top 10 in a country, yet outside the top 1,000 most common names in the UK.

Finally, it's worth considering that if your first language isn't English, you might be able to make a lot more money by investing in the cctld of the country to which it relates. Always go with what you know...

 

[Whibs]

britishenglish.co.uk

Owned by an American on a German TAG.

The irony of it;-)

 

[Mrs Biscuit]

There are others too to be aware of, although a lot of Brits can't tell the difference any more these days, eg adviser = British English, advisor = US English. It's very common to see Brits using "advisor".

I nearly made a similar (worse!) language mistake because of not understanding the French language very well. I saw a great domain available "sales". I was going to jump in and buy it but luckily my other half was around and he asked why on earth I wanted to buy that one. "Don't you realise that 'sales' in French means 'dirty'?"

Oops.

Edit: should have said it was a French domain which I thought would appeal to French people.

 

[Ashton]

But surely even using the french meaning it would still be valuable ? (think how much dirty.co.uk could be worth to a cleaning company)

Anyway, on topic:

100% agree, color and real estate seem to be the most prevalent. Vacation, Soccer and Jewelry are other examples.

 

[Mrs Biscuit]

It was a .fr name and there would have been plenty of hoops to jump through to get it. (Need to get a friend resident in France, etc.) Also, if it was so easily available then why did some French person not jump on it. It was too good to be true.

Vacation, as you say, is a big one, and "holidays" seems to have a whole different meaning in the US.

Another is "autos", we say "cars". There's a lot of other differences but mostly they don't matter, unless you're buying a co.uk.