.co.uk vs .uk

[Lucky Luke]

Well, it's good to see this lot spreading the word : Evangelists.UK

 

[dee]

I think they'll end up coexisting. I'm a fan of the UK for all the reasons mentioned previously, and if both were launched side by side I suspect it'd be no competition. You'll never get rid of one over the other though because there is such a huge legacy of co.uk sites running that will never go away. I think uk will just slowly creep up and become an "as well as" norm.

I guess if you have generics, then the co.uk has slight advantage at moment as public will currently default to co.uk

 

[Lucky Luke]

@Trauiner Probably true.

Just bumped into the site yesterday as evangelist.uk is dropping today and I wondered what the plural was doing.

 

[KarlM]

Try and look at it from a general member of the public and not someone that has invested £ in .uk names, should give you the answer.

 

[JMI]

Owner's of a premium .UK or .co.uk who don't have the pair are kind of the real losers.

 

[Lucky Luke]

I guess the point there is about how cheaply can you buy a premium or reasonable .UK. Even if it's dirt cheap, is it money down the drain?

Having said that, I am surprised (and I probably shouldn't be) at how cheaply some quite nice .UK domains go for on DomainLore or Flip

Clearly, I like the .UK but I do see that it has a long road ahead of it with an uncertain destination

 

[splashweb]

If I was using a brandable domain for a site, and hadn't got the pair, then spending a few hundred quid on a UK Trade Mark is probably the best protection I could get against any later "pitch invasion" of my brand; valid for up to 20 years if you renew it. A TM would also, to varying degrees, potentially devalue the other one of the pair by limiting it's use.

Personally, I wouldn't start a brand if I only had the .co.uk, but I would with just the .uk.

Generics not so much use here.

 

[M40]

Looks like they couldn't get the .co.uk and couldn't afford the .com (or justify the cost at least).

The .co.uk was available to them for under $200. But they could not afford to spend more than their original offer of $20.

I would have given them it for free but they were rude, and was the shady TV preacher type. I let the domain drop.

 

[crazihos]

I'm going to add this anecdotally as I never compiled figures.

12 months+ ago we had to use both versions (co.uk/.uk) of one of our brands in concurrent PPC campaigns.

Both used virtually the same ad text, keywords that were similar enough to give reliable results and over a hundred thousand clicks.

The .uk's performance had a lower CTR and also lower on site conversion but the difference was marginal - a couple of % at most and certainly nothing that would put me off using a .uk domain.

People genuinely don't seem to care what they click on.

The branding confusion is another matter though - that does bother me.

 

[JMI]

I suppose you'd have to be pretty thick to start any kind of business you wanted to scale in the future only owning the .UK. I guess its ok for little private blog or something small. Imagine monster only launching on .UK and not .co.uk

 

[crazihos]

I suppose you'd have to be pretty thick to start any kind of business you wanted to scale in the future only owning the .UK. I guess its ok for little private blog or something small. Imagine monster only launching on .UK and not .co.uk

I was thinking about this and agree with it to a point but the reality is that most businesses will never get to a stage that it matters either way.

 

[JMI]

I was thinking about this and agree with it to a point but the reality is that most businesses will never get to a stage that it matters either way.

Yes, I guess if it works it works you could say, maybe it's one of the reasons why they never get to that stage.