.UK Announced

[Stephen]

Going forward

I Don't think the new domain is masively to blame. I think the market is on the decline largely due to the recent changes to Google. I reckon you have as much chance of ranking quertyuiop.co.uk than former premium names. Brandables are all I will really buy or keywords for eye appeal rather than any ranking benefits..

I would also add that the general UK recession and businesses treading water than trying to expand has not helped with domain after sales.

I think that when some of the generics were originally registered they did know quite what they were going to be used for and I'm sure some owners regret not selling them when SEO companies were spending money on domains to help increase traffic and nobody is saying those days will return.

But we are going into another chapter and quality domain names with the right tld will still be in demand even with all the new gTLD's around the corner but maybe £xxx and low £x,xxx's for UK domains not the the £xx,xxxx that many domainers demand.

My issue is, if Nominet could so blatantly disregard 10 million exisiting UK registrants with their .uk proposal, are they are the right people to help the UK namespace go forward?

...It's all down to quality of your site and updating it multiple times daily, more so than previosuly. Companies are seeing more and more traffic to their twitter feeds than their websites and that is going to increase too.
..

It surely is a changing world but that also provides the UK namespace with opportunities not just threats.

I would like to see Nominet (or whoever replaces them) really think hard about how to help exisiting and new businesses evolve in the future.

I'm letting the majority of my domains drop and the only names I will keep are those that I may use for a physical business. Not interested in affiliate marketing or domain dealing any longer. Dac and membership will not be renewed. I'm out.

Good luck with your future ventures.

 

[Brassneck]

I Don't think the new domain is masively to blame. I think the market is on the decline largely due to the recent changes to Google. I reckon you have as much chance of ranking quertyuiop.co.uk than former premium names. Brandables are all I will really buy or keywords for eye appeal rather than any ranking benefits.
It's all down to quality of your site and updating it multiple times daily, more so than previosuly. Companies are seeing more and more traffic to their twitter feeds than their websites and that is going to increase too.
I'm letting the majority of my domains drop and the only names I will keep are those that I may use for a physical business. Not interested in affiliate marketing or domain dealing any longer. Dac and membership will not be renewed.

I'm out.

Yes a very pragmatic approach. The UK domain market was in significant decline already and the nominet proposals have just accelerated what I think where we were going to end up anyway.

Stephen

 

[Nigel]

Yes a very pragmatic approach. The UK domain market was in significant decline already and the nominet proposals have just accelerated what I think where we were going to end up anyway.

Stephen

Hi Stephen,

I agree that the market was down from the peak of 2011, and Google EMD hasn't helped, but there was always going to be significant demand and high prices for real quality descriptive domains. On 1st November 2012 dnjournal reported the Sedo brokered sale of webhosting.co.uk for $500,000. That .co.uk sale topped the leaderboard in dnjournal that week. Not bad for an extension that some people are now saying is too long, needs more 'trust', and more security features!

http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2012/20121107.htm

So if nominet hadn't launched their direct.uk consultation I think the market would still be fairly strong although quite a bit down from the peak in 2011. We might still see some nice sales, but I can't see anyone else investing anywhere near $500,000 in a .co.uk domain until this confusion is cleared.

 

[Brassneck]

Hi Stephen,

I agree that the market was down from the peak of 2011, and Google EMD hasn't helped, but there was always going to be significant demand and high prices for real quality descriptive domains. On 1st November 2012 dnjournal reported the Sedo brokered sale of webhosting.co.uk for $500,000. That .co.uk sale topped the leaderboard in dnjournal that week. Not bad for an extension that some people are now saying is too long, needs more 'trust', and more security features!

http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2012/20121107.htm

So if nominet hadn't launched their direct.uk consultation I think the market would still be fairly strong although quite a bit down from the peak in 2011. We might still see some nice sales, but I can't see anyone else investing anywhere near $500,000 in a .co.uk domain until this confusion is cleared.

Nigel

Absolutely agree about top premium names, there will always be possibilities on those. Unfortunately more than 99 per cent of the domains held by domain investors fall outside of the 'premium' bracket and it is these which are increasingly difficult to shift at any price. I honestly think this was happening several months before the Nominet announcement. I sometimes wonder if there was ever much of a secondary market - looking back many of my better sales quite a high proportion ended up in the hands of domainers / affiliate marketeers.

Stephen.

PS. Good to see you back on Acorn even if the subject matter is a bit depressing.

 

[Stephen]

Resignations at Nominet Stakeholder committee

I see Andrew Bennett is reporting that the chair of the Nominet's .uk Policy Stakeholder Committee James Panton has resigned ? Along with his deputy Mike Galvin?

Not communicated to members, the reasons are not known. Nor was Dave Thomas's appointment to the committee. Dave wrote in the guardian this week about it.... we didn't know he did so in the capacity of his new post.

Resignations at Nominet Stakeholder committee. Just received a reply from Nominet (on Christmas Eve - so well done for trying to help the situation along)

This seems like a plusable story from Nominet so no finger pointing resignations their:

In answer to your specific questions about James Panton and Mike Galvin, James advised us that he had changed jobs to a new role outside of our industry, at Specsavers, and did not feel it would be appropriate to remain on the committee in the light of that career change. Similarly, Mike Galvin told us that he simply could not spare the time to participate on the committee any longer, given his workload as Managing Director of BT Openreach. Roger Darlington, who was deputy chairman, is now acting chair of the committee.I will look into why these changes have yet to be formally communicated to members and stakeholders.

 

[websaway]

Nigel

Absolutely agree about top premium names, there will always be possibilities on those. Unfortunately more than 99 per cent of the domains held by domain investors fall outside of the 'premium' bracket and it is these which are increasingly difficult to shift at any price. I honestly think this was happening several months before the Nominet announcement. I sometimes wonder if there was ever much of a secondary market - looking back many of my better sales quite a high proportion ended up in the hands of domainers / affiliate marketeers.

Stephen.

PS. Good to see you back on Acorn even if the subject matter is a bit depressing.

You raise a good point in where some sold domains were ending up, I think that was because people thought the google exact match bandwagon would never end.
The future will be about getting quality domains to end users, educating end users about the long term benefit of working off industry/product descriptive domains, and not so much about this name has got a zillion exact searches according to the google keyword tool ( but it's as long as your arm and has got no later resale value ).
Businesses should be biting hands off to get 1 to 5 k domain names to spearhead there marketing plans,names that not only do the job but remain a business intellectual property asset.

 

[Nigel]

Phil Kingsland at T.R.A.F.F.I.C in 2009

I am putting together some documents and links to show how Nominet have pumped up the .co.uk extension over the years - encouraging businesses (and domainers!) to invest large sums of money in this extension. They even attended domainer events as a means to promote the .co.uk extension. Phil Kingsland (the same one now promoting direct.uk on the guardian.co.uk website and saying that the 'proposed product would create a new, trusted online home for British businesses') was at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C domain conference and expo held in Amsterdam in June 2009. He was one of four panelists all promoting their country codes. Here is an excerpt from a dnjournal report:

'The four panelists represented a total of 23 million registered ccTLD - a whopping 32% of the global country code market. Phil Kingsland of .co.uk administrator Nominet said the extension is experiencing some of the biggest growth it has seen since the .com boom of a decade ago. Kingsland added that 150,000 new .co.uk domains are registered every month and that a survey showed that 80% of businesses in the UK prefer the .co.uk extension over the .com.'
The dnjournal article concluded by saying:

'Regarding the new gTLDs that ICANN plans to start rolling out next year, the panelists universally felt that they would have a very hard time getting off the ground. They noted that success requires usage and the existing extensions are too strong to be dislodged now because people already know and trust them.'

Hi Stephen - just saw your reply. Hope you are well and wish you a very happy Christmas.

Here is the link to the article:
http://www.dnjournal.com/cover/2009/june.htm

 

[cav]

It seems that the consensus here is that the main (or only) winner from the introduction of direct.uk will be Nominet.

Historically, "domainers" are one of Nominet's biggest sources of income. Therefore, perhaps an approach to consider if this looks like going ahead is mass non-participation in .uk by "domainers". This would significantly reduce their predicted income stream and maybe make those most likely to gain from this at Nominet to think again.

This is a radical and risky strategy as all "domainers" have to pull together and hold firm but extractive regimes in history have been toppled through the adoption of such pluralistic approaches.

 

[websaway]

It seems that the consensus here is that the main (or only) winner from the introduction of direct.uk will be Nominet.

Historically, "domainers" are one of Nominet's biggest sources of income. Therefore, perhaps an approach to consider if this looks like going ahead is mass non-participation in .uk by "domainers". This would significantly reduce their predicted income stream and maybe make those most likely to gain from this at Nominet to think again.

This is a radical and risky strategy as all "domainers" have to pull together and hold firm but extractive regimes in history have been toppled through the adoption of such pluralistic approaches.

You might need to think this one through again if I'm reading you correctly.

 

[websaway]

A question.


If the .uk is a new product, why would co.uk owners get any preferential rights to register them ?

 

[Stephen]

ofcom and DNSSEC

This makes an interesting read.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/internet/domain-name-security/

Did Nominet jump or were they pushed into more security?

 

[websaway]

This makes an interesting read.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/internet/domain-name-security/

Did Nominet jump or were they pushed into more security?

Maybe but as I said earlier, a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

 

[GreyWing]

Or Nominet have been lobbying ofcom to say that. There is no way to say and I wouldn't trust Nominet's version if they told me anyway.

Remember Nominet secretly asked BERR to ask Nominet to get a governance report into Nominet. Some may find that sentence confusing but it is true.

 

[Nigel]

This makes an interesting read.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/internet/domain-name-security/

Did Nominet jump or were they pushed into more security?

Thanks for finding this Stephen. Very interesting especially ofcoms findings:

"...In interviews, ISPs and other hosting companies all say that there is no customer demand for DNSSEC."

 

[Stephen]

New Year Resolution!

Season's greetings.

For those that have not yet completed the Nominet .uk consultation feedback, please
go and do it now,
you know you'll feel better that your voice has been put on record.

Act before it is too late

 

[jimmc]

We now have 42 signatures calling for an EGM. Some from people I have never heard of, so it is not just a domainers issue.

We need to get 5% to call an EGM....

From my point of view I have mothballed a big project and won't be starting any more development. In addition I won't be renewing anything but my premium domains over the next 6 months as it stands.

How many signatures do you have now and how many represents 5%

 

[GreyWing]

How many signatures do you have now and how many represents 5%

Hi Mate,

We have around 8% of voting rights, we only need 5% to call an EGM and issue a written statement to all members. So the system is there should we need to call one.

The 5% goes on voting share, so how many names on one tag plays a massive part. You could in theory have 1000 members calling for an EGM and still not have enough. Or you could have just 2 members calling for one and have 6%.

Cheers
GW

 

[DarrenTSO]

5% would be approximately equal to 500,000 domains.

 

[DarrenTSO]

On the last voting rights PDF that I managed to import into a database (not the most recent one, but the one before that) there are only 58 tags/registrars with more than 10,000 domains, and only ~20 with more than 50,000. With only 42 signatures, it seems unlikely you'll have 5%.

 

[woopwoop]

Season's greetings.

For those that have not yet completed the Nominet .uk consultation feedback, please
go and do it now,
you know you'll feel better that your voice has been put on record.

Act before it is too late

I just completed it because of your nudge. Here's the link for anyone else:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1025946/Nominet-Consultation-On-a-New-UK-Name-Service