The .uk domains spotted in the wild thread

[Lee]

This was originally posted on UKDNF by someone else and it was a thread highlighting which companies/organisations are using or have switched to the shorter .uk domain. So far we had found...

Friends of the Earth - FriendsOfTheEarth.uk

Trading Standards - TradingStandards.uk

Glaucoma UK - Glaucoma.uk

Owens Group - large transport company - OwensGroup.uk

Domainlore - Domainlore.uk


Anyone else seen any? Please add them below!

 

[andrew]

Nominet - Nominet.uk

NHS - nhs.uk

UK Parliament - parliament.uk

Sexual Health London - shi.uk

Election Maps - electionmaps.uk

Defib Finder defibfinder.uk

Supreme Court - supremecourt.uk

Police - police.uk

 

[andrew]

Japes Restaurant - Japes.uk

ActEarly - ActEarly.uk

Cleveland Clinic London ClevelandClinicLondon.uk

Extinction Rebellion ExtinctionRebellion.uk

Worthing Theatres and Museum - wtm.uk

Global Knives (ecommerce) GlobalKnives.uk

British Library - bl.uk

 

[wonder_lander]

4m.uk

 

[astutiumRob]

Police - police.uk

Is the SLD rather than Domain (in the same way as co.uk) though

 

[Kaleido]

ClimateAssembly.uk

 

[andrew]

HeartInternet.uk

 

[username]

Sexual Health London - shi.uk

SHL.uk btw.

But that's not why I'm commenting, I noticed at the bottom of their website they link to sh.uk which is another one of their sites by the looks of things. An even nicer .uk for non-LANDAN centric rubber johnny services.

 

[DJ]

I still see more hyphenated domains in the wild than .uk's, so the odd website here and there isn't going to improve the outlook.

Until the bigger companies/website adopt them, it will always be an upward struggle.

Nominet must be seeing the registration numbers decline on .uk's, yet they are doing nothing to promote it.

You have to wonder, will they just end up like .me.uk and .org.uk, which will be sad, but at the moment that is looking more likely than it replacing
.co.uk.

 

[GreyWing]

I still see more hyphenated domains in the wild than .uk's, so the odd website here and there isn't going to improve the outlook.

Until the bigger companies/website adopt them, it will always be an upward struggle.

Nominet must be seeing the registration numbers decline on .uk's, yet they are doing nothing to promote it.

You have to wonder, will they just end up like .me.uk and .org.uk, which will be sad, but at the moment that is looking more likely than it replacing
.co.uk.

I don't think they can't push .uk now, if they do try to sell it as a shorter better alternative, a lot of angry .co.uk owners will be asking how they didn't know about it and lost their .uk equivalent rights. The current board had nothing to do with the old decision to launch the way they did, but I think they know that to try and promote it could provoke an angry response.

All my new sites launch on .uk, but I wouldn't migrate an existing .co.uk to the .uk yet, especially if it was ranking well - no point rocking the boat.

 

[atlas]

I find UK companies tend to stick to .co.uk

Foreign companies, especially US ones, seem to prefer .uk

 

[GreyWing]

I find UK companies tend to stick to .co.uk

Foreign companies, especially US ones, seem to prefer .uk

I've found that as well. I had the Monday(com) guys asking about Monday(uk), I didn't really want to sell it and offered Monday(co.uk). They wouldn't offer anything for it, not even £1000, they just didn't want to know. I guess to them, it may look like a .org.uk to us.

 

[username]

Nominet must be seeing the registration numbers decline on .uk's, yet they are doing nothing to promote it.

.UK Register Statistics - 2023

www.nominet.uk

.UK Register Statistics - 2024

www.nominet.uk

Since Jan 2023 .UK has lost in the tens of thousands, .CO.UK has lost hundreds of thousands.

a lot of angry .co.uk owners will be asking how they didn't know about it and lost their .uk equivalent rights.

I'm confused... All owners were informed about it.

 

[GreyWing]

I'm confused... All owners were informed about it.

Sort of, they did email people but it was very half hearted in my opinion. They did have a few tv adverts, but again nothing much. I don't recall them really pushing it, and since then they have pushed the .uk family, rather than the .uk ext.

For whatever reason, Nominet didn't really go at it like most of us expected them to. Perhaps it suited them to have a lot of names in different hands, duplication on reg fees.

 

[username]

Sort of, they did email people but it was very half hearted in my opinion.

Yes it looks like they did as you say. https://www.nominet.uk/nominet-to-begin-emailing-uk-rights-holders/

What more can you do than that though?

I do agree though it was a shambles, they should have just locked them down and let people have both, that would have been better imho.

 

[GreyWing]

What more can you do than that though?

Not much more, I think it would have been great if they used the word "upgraded" to .uk. They didn't really sell a need for .co.uk owners to register it. I they would have used adverts with the words "upgraded" "shortened", I think that would have helped. But basically they just said, buy your equivalent name, and that was it, that was the sales pitch. Or they could have been honest, if you don't register it, some domain investor will register it and sell it back to you one day for £10,000.

I don't think Nominet had a clear reason for .uk in their messaging, probably because apart from that last one, there really was no need for anyone to register it.

I do agree though it was a shambles, they should have just locked them down and let people have both, that would have been better.

Yes, that's it in a nutshell. I always believed it would have been better to lock them together, and you could upgrade to .uk via the Nominet control panel. But once you had upgraded, you could never downgrade. Nominet would then just 301 the .co.uk to the .uk at the Registry level.

I just wonder @dn if the last 5-6 messages have naturally drifted off into a .co.uk v .uk thread of its own. Would it be worth splitting from the original ".uk spotted in the wild" thread so they may continue in slightly different directions?

 

[Kaleido]

I've found that as well. I had the Monday(com) guys asking about Monday(uk), I didn't really want to sell it

Out of interest, why didn't you want to sell it to what I'd consider to be the ideal end user?

 

[GreyWing]

Out of interest, why didn't you want to sell it to what I'd consider to be the ideal end user?

No worries, I was going to try and turn it into a loan brand at some point in the future, I thought it was a nice standout name.

I do sell names that I catch, but very rarely sell any of the bigger names that I paid money for. Whenever I buy a name, I always do so with the aim of turning it into a real world business at some point, in a way I'm my own end user. In reality, struggles for time and my lack of genuine development skills to make things work the way I'd like them to, it doesn't happen as much as I'd like.

 

[DJ]

I find UK companies tend to stick to .co.uk

Foreign companies, especially US ones, seem to prefer .uk

This is interesting, I guess they see it as the TLD, are used to the format, and don't know that the general public simply do not know it exists.

Since Jan 2023 .UK has lost in the tens of thousands, .CO.UK has lost hundreds of thousands.

So in real terms .co.uk's have lost 1.56% since the beginning of the year and .uk's 2.59%. And there are over 6 times (6.46) as many .co.uk's registered than .uk's.

These are not good statistics.

I just wonder @dn if the last 5-6 messages have naturally drifted off into a .co.uk v .uk thread of its own. Would it be worth splitting from the original ".uk spotted in the wild" thread so they may continue in slightly different directions?

Agree

 

[Kaleido]

RealClinic.uk