Wanted: Domain Appraisal UK geo domains

[twostepsbehind]

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]

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]

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]

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.

 

[stitchbob]

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]

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]

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

Can you expand please ? This sounds pretty interesting

 

[twostepsbehind]

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

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

 

[Adam H]

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

 

[Adam H]

Just to note, I wasn't being condecending.

 

[Adam H]

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.

 

[Adam H]

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.

 

[stitchbob]

I think the underlying point is right - Google doesn't care if it's co.uk or .uk for SEO purposes - they're both on equal footing, which is probably above .space and all the other daft ones.

The biggest challenge is always going to be potential competition and confusion with the co.uk. If you read [email protected] to somebody over the phone, there's a fair to middling chance that [email protected] is going to get spammed. Even handing out business cards is likely to send customers to the wrong website for a couple of years yet, just because it's ingrained in people.

I have my own strategies for dealing with that, and it generally involves avoiding situations where it's going to be an issue, and focussing on targets where the fact that it's a .UK is a USP in its own right.

 

[Adam H]

I'm assuming you just fancy disagreeing with me and have no concrete evidence to back up your answer? I could post 20 links now from reputable websites that agree with what I'm saying (including Google). But then you can't even use correct grammar, I don't expect much.

If you think my grammar and spelling is bad now, you should have seen it a year or two ago, it was like reading a book without breathing.....I'm dyslexic but I'm good with that.

I'm disagreeing with you because your rinsing and repeating, following the crowd. With no context.

 

[stitchbob]

.com is still the best because it's basically the default - we're used to it being the standard extension for the biggest player. It wasn't so long ago that IE would attempt to route you to .com if you typed a word in the address bar. And yes, .uk probably ranks below .com if all else is equal. Doesn't change the fact that it's a well established TLD and won't hurt SEO compared to co.uk.

 

[RobM]

I could care less about .com....

You know that means exactly the *opposite* to what you're saying? Sorry just derailing the thread momentarily to point out one of my biggest peeves - now back to calling each other names

 

[armistice]

wow, strong opinions on both sides
Can I ask, coming back to the original question what you think the better geo's from ROR would sell for, e.g. manchester.uk, cornwall.uk, bournemouth.uk, bradford.uk, edinburgh.uk, devon.uk etc

 

[twostepsbehind]

wow, strong opinions on both sides
Can I ask, coming back to the original question what you think the better geo's from ROR would sell for, e.g. manchester.uk, cornwall.uk, bournemouth.uk, bradford.uk, edinburgh.uk, devon.uk etc

Thank you

So three pages and nobody answered my question in OP...

 

[stitchbob]

Shh, we're bickering over here.

The simple answer is, they'll fetch what the market will bear. Manchester, Dublin, Cornwall and the other big ones will probably do pretty well. Monmouthshire and Shropshire probably less so. It'll be interesting to see whether Worcestershire does better than Worcester - the former covers a bigger area, but the latter feels more local to the people who live there.

I don't think any of them will do as well as their co.uk counterparts would do right now, but any of them could be developed as a decent contender for their more established neighbours.

 

[timter51]

Eastbourne.uk got £755 at auction which I think gives a decent indication of current trade prices, that's one of the UK's most popular seaside towns with a £500m tourism industry. You can extropolate that for other geos bringing into account population, tourism, growth etc. And of course end user sales will be higher, possibly 5x+ higher.

I'm not a fan of .uk, but I am a fan of geo .uks.