Popular websites that have switched to .uk

[Edwin]

I know it's too early now to say it for definite, but this looks like a flop.

You're talking about a 5-year-long party being declared a flop because only a relatively few guests arrived in the first 12 hours? That's remarkably pessimistic.

 

[PaulGregory]

coop.uk and co-op.uk reg'd today but not wired up. The Co-operative are not averse to unusual domains, running with co-operative.coop. Interestingly uk.coop is someone else.

Also co-operativefood.uk but not co-operativebank as yet (different registrars I note)

For my money, the point at which this changes from "possible flop" to "definite success" would be when BBC, Google and Amazon switch. As yet they've not even exercised their right (and I can't believe the WHOIS is *that* slow or that they'd register so late in the day).

To my mind, if you're not registering on Day 1, you're waiting to see how things pan out. And the more big names that are holding out, the more doubt there is.

It needs more popular websites to switch *soon* for this to be the party to be seen at. Not slowly over the next 5 years.

 

[Edwin]

I very much doubt that Amazon, Google, the BBC etc. necessarily have a dedicated employee who just "does the domain names". It's more likely the tech team in question is going to have to have internal meetings and a chat about "strategy" because it's more than just a registration - that's the super-duper-easy bit that they have 5 whole years to take care of - but they also have to decide what to DO with the domain since you can bet names that important are going to get residual traffic day 1. So do they redirect? Keep it blank? Move (a major, major decision that will cost them millions in rebranding - that's not to suggest they won't do so, but it's not going to be an overnight thing) Put up a mini site? An explanatory site? Something else?

 

[scooter]

Surely there is more to change than just swapping sites round so co.uk now points to .uk?

301's on a page by page basis?

I think it will be a huge success but will take a while for transition.

I wonder when we will see the first tv advert?



.

 

[Edwin]

Surely there is more to change than just swapping sites round so co.uk now points to .uk?

301's on a page by page basis?

I think it will be a huge success but will take a while for transition.

I wonder when we will see the first tv advert?



.

Oh, definitely. Anyone who knows what they're doing with a website more than a few pages in size will have to proceed very carefully, step by step, when they're working through the transition. Especially if they want to do the least SEO damage possible (all domain moves invariably involve a ranking "hit" but this can be minimised and shortened by doing everything just so)

It's fun to search Twitter for ".uk domain" and see all the people happily telling the world that they've now switched URLs. There's a new tweet every minute or so against that query.

 

[scooter]

I bet at lot lose their advantage in a competitive niche as they do a simple swap and then watch a competitor doing nothing and suddenly ranking higher.



.

 

[Murray]

Surely there is more to change than just swapping sites round so co.uk now points to .uk?

301's on a page by page basis?

You don't need to do it page by page if it's the same site just moved to a different domain

Pretty simple 301 redirect and change the internal links + maybe some other little bits and bobs, if all your page titles end "-domain.co.uk" for example.

So for the average small site it probably wont be too painful to do

But I could imagine quite a lot of people hurting their rankings by moving without researching or hiring someone to do it for them properly.

I can also imagine people letting their co.uk drop eventually and losing a majority of their links

 

[PaulGregory]

I very much doubt that Amazon, Google, the BBC etc. necessarily have a dedicated employee who just "does the domain names". It's more likely the tech team in question is going to have to have internal meetings and a chat about "strategy" because it's more than just a registration...

I don't expect any of them to have a dedicated domains employee! A good sign of a company having had a strategy meeting that ended up with "Yes we'll move at some point" would be that they would have requested the domain to be registered on day 1, and for that to have ended up on *someone's* calendar/to-do list. If they haven't reg'd on day 1, they either have not had that initial strategy meeting or the decision was "lets see what everyone else does".

I think a lot of companies won't have a single .uk strategy meeting until people start seeing amazon.uk, google.uk, bbc.uk - but then when all three do, every company will be having one. It's the tipping point.

 

[diablo]

I wonder when we will see the first tv advert?

That will be an important landmark.

 

[PanzerWagon]

You don't need to do it page by page if it's the same site just moved to a different domain

If you're migrating any site to a new domain extension you should redirect on a page by page basis. Otherwise you're going to suffer huge ranking losses.

 

[Edwin]

I don't expect any of them to have a dedicated domains employee! A good sign of a company having had a strategy meeting that ended up with "Yes we'll move at some point" would be that they would have requested the domain to be registered on day 1, and for that to have ended up on *someone's* calendar/to-do list. If they haven't reg'd on day 1, they either have not had that initial strategy meeting or the decision was "lets see what everyone else does".

Why? 5 years is a massively long time in corporate terms - think how many committee meetings that allows for

Just because a company hasn't acted within 24 hours gives absolutely no clue whatsoever about their intent in the coming days, weeks, months and years.

 

[Murray]

If you're migrating any site to a new domain extension you should redirect on a page by page basis. Otherwise you're going to suffer huge ranking losses.

Why if the site is exactly the same?

a simplish 301 will automatically take domain.co.uk/whatever/whatever.html to the new domains domain.uk/whatever/whatever.html

 

[websaway]

Why? 5 years is a massively long time in corporate terms - think how many committee meetings that allows for

Just because a company hasn't acted within 24 hours gives absolutely no clue whatsoever about their intent in the coming days, weeks, months and years.

Little do they know that they have you to thank for this scenario.

 

[PanzerWagon]

Why if the site is exactly the same?

a simplish 301 will automatically take domain.co.uk/whatever/whatever.html to the new domains domain.uk/whatever/whatever.html

What you just described is page for page redirects though

If you just put a standard 301 redirect from te co.uk to the .uk that won't redirect all sub folders to the new URL automatically. A user would click a link to view domain.co.uk/whatever/whatever and be redirect to domain.uk with a plain 301.

You'd need to specify in the .htaccess usually something like:

Options +FollowSymLinks
 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

 

[Whois-Search]

Will be interesting to see what Sainsburys does with this:
www.nominet.org.uk/whois/lookup?query=sainsburys.uk

 

[Murray]

What you just described is page for page redirects though

Oh I was talking about in the htaccess you don't need to write each 301 individually with the old URL and the new URL for it to go to if the site is the same, so it doesn't take a lot of time.

 

[spiderspider]

"definite success" would be when BBC, Google and Amazon switch.

I doubt very much that the BBC will switch. They already market bbc.co.uk and have that as a major brand.

I believe they have now secured .bbc, so news.bbc or sport.bbc will probably be their next major rebrand.

Will be interesting to see what Amazon, yell, gumtree etc do. With them being in bed with Google, and getting page 1, top 3, for millions of searches. Will they re-direct or try running 2 sites? will they be hit with a dupe content (we can but hope) etc.

 

[Edwin]

Will be interesting to see what Amazon, yell, gumtree etc do. With them being in bed with Google, and getting page 1, top 3, for millions of searches. Will they re-direct or try running 2 sites? will they be hit with a dupe content (we can but hope) etc.

I will be surprised to see any REALLY big sites change until the Chrome handling of the .uk extension is fixed to match that of the .co.uk, .com and other extensions. A major player like Amazon might lose tens of thousands of typein visitors for every day that the bug's not patched. And they have enough tech staff on tap to be completely aware of issues like that.

We had no way to predict what would break and what wouldn't in the run up to yesterday's launch - but now that .uk is out there, I expect fixes won't be far behind.

 

[cm1975]

I will be surprised to see any REALLY big sites change until the Chrome handling of the .uk extension is fixed to match that of the .co.uk, .com and other extensions. A major player like Amazon might lose tens of thousands of typein visitors for every day that the bug's not patched. And they have enough tech staff on tap to be completely aware of issues like that.

We had no way to predict what would break and what wouldn't in the run up to yesterday's launch - but now that .uk is out there, I expect fixes won't be far behind.

I've just updated Chrome today hoping it would be a fix for .UK, but no such luck! Do you think the Chrome problem will only be fixed with an update? If so, there will still be a problem for those who have not updated.

 

[markb]

What is the bug with chrome that affects .uk domains, please could someone explain for everyone who doesn't know.

Thanks