Popular websites that have switched to .uk

[Murray]

If you're migrating any site to a new domain extension you should redirect on a page by page basis. Otherwise you're going to suffer huge ranking losses.

Why if the site is exactly the same?

a simplish 301 will automatically take domain.co.uk/whatever/whatever.html to the new domains domain.uk/whatever/whatever.html

 

[websaway]

Why? 5 years is a massively long time in corporate terms - think how many committee meetings that allows for

Just because a company hasn't acted within 24 hours gives absolutely no clue whatsoever about their intent in the coming days, weeks, months and years.

Little do they know that they have you to thank for this scenario.

 

[PanzerWagon]

Why if the site is exactly the same?

a simplish 301 will automatically take domain.co.uk/whatever/whatever.html to the new domains domain.uk/whatever/whatever.html

What you just described is page for page redirects though

If you just put a standard 301 redirect from te co.uk to the .uk that won't redirect all sub folders to the new URL automatically. A user would click a link to view domain.co.uk/whatever/whatever and be redirect to domain.uk with a plain 301.

You'd need to specify in the .htaccess usually something like:

Options +FollowSymLinks
 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

 

[Whois-Search]

Will be interesting to see what Sainsburys does with this:
www.nominet.org.uk/whois/lookup?query=sainsburys.uk

 

[Murray]

What you just described is page for page redirects though

Oh I was talking about in the htaccess you don't need to write each 301 individually with the old URL and the new URL for it to go to if the site is the same, so it doesn't take a lot of time.

 

[spiderspider]

"definite success" would be when BBC, Google and Amazon switch.

I doubt very much that the BBC will switch. They already market bbc.co.uk and have that as a major brand.

I believe they have now secured .bbc, so news.bbc or sport.bbc will probably be their next major rebrand.

Will be interesting to see what Amazon, yell, gumtree etc do. With them being in bed with Google, and getting page 1, top 3, for millions of searches. Will they re-direct or try running 2 sites? will they be hit with a dupe content (we can but hope) etc.

 

[Edwin]

Will be interesting to see what Amazon, yell, gumtree etc do. With them being in bed with Google, and getting page 1, top 3, for millions of searches. Will they re-direct or try running 2 sites? will they be hit with a dupe content (we can but hope) etc.

I will be surprised to see any REALLY big sites change until the Chrome handling of the .uk extension is fixed to match that of the .co.uk, .com and other extensions. A major player like Amazon might lose tens of thousands of typein visitors for every day that the bug's not patched. And they have enough tech staff on tap to be completely aware of issues like that.

We had no way to predict what would break and what wouldn't in the run up to yesterday's launch - but now that .uk is out there, I expect fixes won't be far behind.

 

[cm1975]

I will be surprised to see any REALLY big sites change until the Chrome handling of the .uk extension is fixed to match that of the .co.uk, .com and other extensions. A major player like Amazon might lose tens of thousands of typein visitors for every day that the bug's not patched. And they have enough tech staff on tap to be completely aware of issues like that.

We had no way to predict what would break and what wouldn't in the run up to yesterday's launch - but now that .uk is out there, I expect fixes won't be far behind.

I've just updated Chrome today hoping it would be a fix for .UK, but no such luck! Do you think the Chrome problem will only be fixed with an update? If so, there will still be a problem for those who have not updated.

 

[markb]

What is the bug with chrome that affects .uk domains, please could someone explain for everyone who doesn't know.

Thanks

 

[Edwin]

What is the bug with chrome that affects .uk domains, please could someone explain for everyone who doesn't know.

Thanks

If you type in just a domain + .uk for example example.uk then Chrome treats it as a signal to do a Google search on "example.uk" instead of directing you to a website (and "example.uk" is unlikely to show up top of the results, at least for a while, so that's doubly bad)

You have to add a "www" in front of it for Chrome to accept it's a domain name.

In contrast, if you type "example.co.uk" into Chrome it will take you straight to the example.co.uk website.

 

[cm1975]

What is the bug with chrome that affects .uk domains, please could someone explain for everyone who doesn't know.

Thanks

If you type a .uk domain into the search, it goes straight to a Google search, rather than the website. You need the www.

Also, when you highlight text for a .co.uk address and right click in Chrome it says "Go to XXXX.co.uk", but when doing this for a .uk, it says "Search Google for XXXX.uk". This one isn't anything major, but does show that they're not completely recognising .uk as a domain.

 

[markb]

If you type in just a domain + .uk for example example.uk then Chrome treats it as a signal to do a Google search on "example.uk" instead of directing you to a website (and "example.uk" is unlikely to show up top of the results, at least for a while, so that's doubly bad)

You have to add a "www" in front of it for Chrome to accept it's a domain name.

In contrast, if you type "example.co.uk" into Chrome it will take you straight to the example.co.uk website.

Thanks for explaining that. Its probably a good idea to register your .uk domains on your most popular websites/domains and redirect them to the .co.uk.

I did this on my food.uk domain and when you type it in via chrome it does recognise it and redirect to the .co.uk domain.

 

[Murray]

I did this on my food.uk domain and when you type it in via chrome it does recognise it and redirect to the .co.uk domain.

Oh did you get that in the end? I thought nominet tried to reserve it for the government or what not.

 

[Edwin]

Oh did you get that in the end? I thought nominet tried to reserve it for the government or what not.

Old news

Nominet backed down from that plan for all but a tiny handful of domains - most of the "contentious" ones were instead reissued with modifications for the non-Government entities needing them.

See pp3-4 of this document: http://registrars.nominet.org.uk/sites/default/files/sldr_rules_140507_final_0.pdf

 

[markb]

Oh did you get that in the end? I thought nominet tried to reserve it for the government or what not.

They said they would let me know by the end of feb, they never got back to me, and I tried chasing them a few times but they never got back to me.

 

[Murray]

They said they would let me know by the end of feb, they never got back to me, and I tried chasing them a few times but they never got back to me.

You must be very pleased/relieved, I bet it helped they also tried to reserve independent.uk so you had their legal people fighting for generics not to be included.

 

[aidman]

You have to add a "www" in front of it for Chrome to accept it's a domain name.

Alternatively add a trailing forward slash... domain.uk/

 

[cm1975]

Another large company, but not in use yet ...

sony.uk

 

[Edwin]

Google.uk was registered today as well (not set up yet though)

 

[invincible]

Google.uk was registered today as well (not set up yet though)

Gmail.uk and YouTube.uk too. I wonder how many other Google brands in addition...


(from iPhone)