I had never been to the United Kingdom until I had a chance to visit it for the Dot-Nxt conference which was then postponed until August.
I have always heard, and was under the impression, that when you look around London and the UK, you will see ads mostly using a .co.uk address, however I found plenty of companies big and small using .com domain names, as much, if not more than .co.uk.
On television, on signs, on buildings, Taxi’s and buses there were an awful lot of .co.uk domain names for sure but there were as many if not more .com’s in use.
There are some 10 million .co.uk domain names, in a country with 62 Million people.
Its a great saturation for a country code to be sure, but my perception of the domain’s usage in the UK is a lot less now, than it was before my visit and certainly nothing like the usage that I saw of .De in Germany compared to .com.
Of course I didn’t travel extensively throughout the country, so I can only report what I saw.
In the next two years there should also be a .london which might cut into the .co.uk market even more.
Did you see any dot co with the “it’s shorter than .co.uk” argument? Not trying to hijack, just thinking about renewals on a bunch of LLL see oh’s.
I’m an Aussie/Brit living in London and agree that .com is big over here. Although I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s more widely used than .co.uk, it’s my belief that .com is a global domain name, representing the standing of a company, and I think sometimes people associate it more as Americas domain. Can’t America have .us……..? Regardless, if you are a business operating solely in the UK, registering a .co.uk would suffice, but .com’s are also widely accepted by the public too. e g http://the-shard.co.uk will redirect to the .com. If a UK company is large enough to trade internationally, chances are if it can acquire a .com, it will. With smaller businesses it varies.
The same can be said in Australia. In AU the .com.au namespace has become competitive, and from my observations, Australian businesses prefer .com.au’s over .com’s – but still there are many businesses on .com’s.
I look forward to .london, I think it looks nicer than .co.uk…
I’m afraid I haven’t seen any .co’s in the two years I’ve been in London. Do you guys know why they went with .co.uk as apposed to .com.uk?
Same with their “relative” Tutor Germans from 400 AD. Certainly I am not the only one to part with a .com to an entity want wants a “global” brand vs. .DE. They want out of this socialist Euro nonsense so bad – that they are funding – that means one thing .COM
That’s very interesting……I would have never thought that. I too have never been there.
Every time I have bought a strong keyword .com domain targeting the UK the domain either does not get much traffic from the UK, or if it does get substantial traffic they shun clicking on any ads on a parked page. I always thought they just were loyal mostly to .co.uk .
I’ve noticed over the years that sometimes traveling gives you insights into domains you don’t get otherwise, including the domain boards.
Welcome to UK 🙂
Generally I would say its a good idea here to have both. The .co.uk domains seem to be favoured at G for searches conducted in UK, and both get type-in.
If you get time in London check out the new cable-car across the river, pretty cool view of the city.
Was told about a decade ago by people in th uk that the split is about 50/50, sounds like not much has changed.
Europe in general has far more .COM usage than many people realize.
I went to Spain / Italy / France recently and noticed how popular .COM was.
The ccTLD are still heavily used, and in Barcelona I noticed how heavily used .CAT was.
As far as .CO, I have not been to UK since it was released, but I bet .CO is just as confusing to .CO.UK there as it is to .COM in the US.
In the real world I am not sure the last time I have seen a .CO advertised, but I have seen plenty of .BIZ
Brad
“Europe in general has far more .COM usage than many people realize.”
Yes – brad – dead on – but much more to your statement IMO –
This is the “Internet” exit plan for all the “policy” coming from as far as the current US President. Anybody that is or wants to be part of or add to the worldwide GNP is out 🙂
In the last 6-9 months I passed on very decent mid 5 digit deals from german and uk folks wanting the .com representation of their .de/ /co/uk because the stroke is over – history dictates a “jury” (public) can only be bullshitted once by a silver tongue.
Not meant to be political – I just know what put dough in your pocket.
And of the 10M registered .co.uk’s probably 30% (at least) of those are registered by domainers and 50% of the remaining 70% are not a 1 domain to 1 resident ratio. (in other words most end users probably have more than 1 domain) so in the end an even smaller percentage of the population owns and uses a .co.uk
I’m an Aussie/Brit living in London and agree that .com is big over here. Although I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s more widely used than .co.uk, it’s my belief that .com is a global domain name, representing the standing of a company, and I think sometimes people associate it more as Americas domain. Can’t America have .us……..? Regardless, if you are a business operating solely in the UK, registering a .co.uk would suffice, but .com’s are also widely accepted by the public too. e g the-shard.co.uk will redirect to the .com. If a UK company is large enough to trade internationally, chances are if it can acquire a .com, it will. With smaller businesses it varies.
The same can be said in Australia. In AU the .com.au namespace has become competitive, and from my observations, Australian businesses prefer .com.au’s over .com’s – but still there are many businesses on .com’s.
I look forward to .london, I think it looks nicer than .co.uk…
I was talking with the owner of a small Rug company recently regarding domains, and he told me that the week before, he had a call from another Rug company in Manchester (using the same brand name) asking to buy the website / and .co.uk domain off the person I was talking with. He turned the guy down flat, but having recently sold some domains myself, I was telling him to consider alternative domains to the one he was using, and get back to the guy with a figure. When I checked later that day on Godaddy, the .com was still available! What that says about the preference of a nationally recognised extention over an international one is open for discussion. Anyhow, I quickly informed this person that he should register the .com and sell the .co.uk onto the other company, though I’m still not sure he’s keen to do so.
Firstly, here in the UK we are in some ways quite ‘Americanised’. As a domainer I see .co.uk being used by some (but not all small businesses) but in general people are very aware of the need for .com.
As regards .co I have never seen a business here using it.
Finally, London is a small part of the U.K. so generally .london will probably be a failure in general and only have vanity use against the use of .com or .co.uk.
Of course, you should have asked !
.com and .co.uk everywhere
I have seen http://reeves.co advertised
Hello MHB
.COM is the worlds most rcognizable BRAND. That along with owning the worlds largest repeat
Traffic.
Not to mention that the Largest Channeled Money source in Recorded History, drives the Worlds
Largest Click to sales ratio within the .COM Channel. The worlds largest corporations have their
” Virtual Business Foundations ” firmly rooted in the .Com Channel.
What more need I say !
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
David –
“London is a small part of the U.K.”
HAHAHAHAHA
Those have to be the words of a northerner.
Londons direct GDP contribution est. is as much as 30%, its economy is bigger than a lot of European countries. When the north sea oil runs out or Scotland decide to exit that 30% will start working it way towards 50% and thats direct contribution to the combined economy that remains inter linked.
Indirectly you can only guess at the importance of London. 50% of the tourism vistor spend is in London, how much of that other 50% spend would have bothered coming if it were not for London? How many companies would set up in other parts of the UK if their execs were not able to be in London?
Take London off the map and the rest of the UK becomes as important as Botswana.
Thats the truth Ruth.
@ Back in the real World.
I thought we were talking about domains not GDP etc. Businesses in any town or city outside of London are not likely to use a .london domain as opposed to .com or .co.uk. That we be a poor marketing choice.
I’m also from the UK – just outside London
In the UK both .co.uk and .com are used. From personal observations I’d say .co.uk is used more wider than .com, but people in UK would rather have both. Don’t forget there are a lot of International chains operating in the UK – so .com will be very visible.
Outside London you’d see .co.uk perhaps in wider use.
In my opinion .London will never take off. It will never get the backing or market to get going.
Also to answer question above – .co domains are not used really used in the UK. General consumers in the street wouldn’t even know the extension existed – and if it was ever published people would probably type in .co.uk thinking it was a misprint.
David & John –
It depends what perspective you look at .London from – if its to reg and resell there will be nice keywords but this isnt going to make anyone a millionaire, if its to develop and it gets a boost in search coming out of London on Google (low chance of this) then its nice.
I can see 200,000 – 400,000 .London domains registered by end of year 1, thats my conservative estimate, that will be nice money to the registrar. Remember this is not like .Co having to advertise to the rest of the world. When .London hits if their PR is any decent it will be all over the news, I can see Boris Johnson telling people to get one. The extension will get far more free publicity to potential end users than .Co could ever dream of. They could have a tie in with companies house with discounts etc etc etc, theres a whole lot that can be done with this extension. For the registrar its a winner, of that I have no doubt.
Havent seen much if any .Co in the UK but I do see increasingly more .TV domains advertised on TV.
.co as a shorter extension of .co.uk is a weak argument, no serious business in the UK would invest in a Columbian domain name to market their business. The only people who care about . co domains are domain investors and the people who run .co.
Do the people of America use .us? Or do they think that .com was designed for them alone?
Hello Mike ! I hope you enjoyed your visit to the UK. When you have more time , try and go further afield. We have an amazing VARIETY of arcgitecture and scenery for a smallish group of islands. Hope you see my country, Wales , next time. We have beautiful hill scenery and a stunning coastline. Have a look at my coastal farm and tourist attraction , Cardigan Island Coastal Farm Park on http://www.cardiganisland.com.
The UK is fascinating . Not only Wales, there are the Cotswolds; Bath;Chester;York;Stonehenge; Lake District; Peak District; Yorkshire Dales ; Cornwall ; thatched villages; wonderful historic country pubs; Scottish Highlands; Antrim Coast; Historic castles[ Wales has more per sq mile than anywhere; Portmeirion ; Snowdonia; Gower Peninsula…….the list is endless !
Even though London has some wonderful historic landmarks…..there is SO MUCH to see in every corner of the UK.
Now, BOTH .com and .co.uk domains are VERY important to UK businesses. It is best to have BOTH …..plus the hyphenated versions of the domain. Hyphens are FAR more popular in Europe than the USA due to our national grammars. Note that Mercedes-Benz…..one of the biggest brands in the world is hyphenated.
A lot of SMALL UK businesses use only.co.uk , because it is cheaper and they are not international. If they do any international trade, they use .com or sometimes .net.
However, some only use .com because it is the top domain and recognised all over Europe and elsewhere. France and Germany use a lot of .com as well. you sold visitberlin.com to Berlin Tourism for $250,000 did you not? All the top tourism domains of Europe…inc UK…are VisitPlace.com. Mind you, hyphenated versions are gaining ground, too. I sold visit-hungary.com to Austria for 2000 Euros and is used by Hungarian Tourism.
Official Wales tourism is VisitWales.com and VisitWales.co.uk. I have owned Visit-Wales.co.uk since 2004.
I sold VisitCalifornia.co.uk to California Travel and Tourism authority. They already used VisitCalifornia.com. They wanted the .co.uk ending to TARGET UK TOURISTS and MAKE THEM FEEL IT WAS MORE BRITISH…….hence attracting more of them. They used my domain in a TV campaign in the UK.They spent 5 million dollars on the campaign in the first 2 or 3 years and got 160 million dollars back into California[ according to internet marketing info]. It featured the then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It is regarded as one of the most successful TV marketing campaigns ever, with regards to return on capital outlay.
So .co.uk domains have their place in international tourism. I have many VisiPlace.co.uk domains for sale, that other locations can utilise. I also have Visit-California.co.uk still for sale.
We like the .co.uk space, but even as I am a huge investor in .co.uk wish I had concentrated on .com’s as I find selling the .co.uk is a country specific audience and my biggest sales have been .com’s rather than .co.uk
A .com is internation and can work in the UK.
A uk only really works in the UK and since we speak English in the UK, is there a point to have the .co.uk?