The state of the UK namespace.

[JMI]

My impression of the market now is that .co.uk is at the beginning (again) of a small up curve, but its a different kund of demand this time. Theres been a lot of technical resistance against domains in the last 10 years, but the shake out clearly shows they are still required and are the most complete and direct relationship between user and web service.

If you have big plans for a project and want to play with the big boys, then almost certainly you'll have to put your hands in your pocket to acquire a premium domain to operate at that level - the girlstrousers.org.uk days are over .. you won't be able to show me any successful online brand that hasn't got the domain right from the start, likewise you won't find a truly successful business with only one person in it.

 

[dog]

I wish .US was more popular but the reality is that most people in America choose .com for a business.

The .UK namespace has 10+ million regs with a smaller population. With .US there are 2 million.

https://domainnamestats.com

Nominets lack of care and attention to promoting the namespace.. Is it just going to get worse? Is .co.uk/.uk as bad as .us?

 

[RobM]

No extension with presence/nationality requirements is going to be able to compete with extensions open to anyone in the world.

 

[dog]

What about .CA @RobM? That's been a very successful extension in Canada and it is quite restrictive.

 

[RobM]

Still only 2-3 million registrations. I would have liked to take part in the ca market as I see a lot of canadians in it but can't due to presence. I'm sure there are a lot of people who are in the same boat.

 

[dog]

For the size of the country the usage stats are good.

2.8 million .CA.

 

[TinkyWinky]

10million - I took a quick look at the latest registrations (3rd Jan) which shows... amongst others...

afhclrha.co.uk
abbtatfjqieay.co.uk
agrcsefvn.co.uk

Plus domains like :

accountstatement-update87.co.uk

All regged on a year - presumably for free...

Look back across any dates and there's lots that are there - but do not show as registered via the WHOIS...

So would like to see the "real" stats for UK registrations as I am sure they are below 10m.

 

[crabfoot]

I'm not going to explain this - unless someone pays me - because I'm still surviving on the scraps I can glean - but one reason .co.uk and uk domains do not fetch big prices is because they do not hold their age.

There is truth in the saying that an aged domain is better than a freshly registered one.

When a .com drops, if it is caught promptly it retains its age from its original registration, whereas a co.uk loses its age when it drops. But the rule to obtain the real benefits of age does not apply to UK domains, they are not old enough.

I once sold a co.uk for £5000 to an International Organisation, and it was trading on their mark. Rather than sue me out of the domain, they preferred to buy it. Only one logical reason to do that - the age on the domain was valuable, from 2002 it hadn't been dropped, and it (just) predated the establishment of their biz..

 

[RobM]

I thought .coms do take the new date if they actually drop and are reregistered. It's just that most of them are warehoused by registrars who then auction them and therefore never actually enter available state. Registrars aren't allowed to do that in uk namespace (yet.. but I'm sure that'll be next for 123reg and nominet's 'friends') so have to have a new date.

 

[ian]

I once sold a co.uk for £5000 to an International Organisation, and it was trading on their mark. Rather than sue me out of the domain, they preferred to buy it. Only one logical reason to do that - the age on the domain was valuable, from 2002 it hadn't been dropped, and it (just) predated the establishment of their biz..

That just sounds like a naive buyer to be honest, why pay £5000 when a £700 DRS would have acheived the same goal.

 

[Murray]

I Only one logical reason to do that - the age on the domain was valuable

Google doesn't take the Whois registration date into account historically or currently

Belief is very valuable though so I guess if you can trade off of that it works out.

 

[crabfoot]

Google doesn't take the Whois registration date into account historically or currently

​

That's what they tell everybody - and as you said,​

Belief is very valuable though so I guess if you can trade off of that it works out.
But it is not entirely the truth.

Whatever, it is too late to squeeze benefit from most Nominet domains.

 

[crabfoot]

That just sounds like a naive buyer to be honest, why pay £5000 when a £700 DRS would have acheived the same goal.

It cost them more than £5k because they employed an agency to buy it from me.
A DRS would not have succeeded immediately, because the domain registration pre-dated their foundation and there was a site up - I had grounds to accuse them of passing off, if I had wanted to fight.
The site was derelict, though, and I needed the money ...

 

[crabfoot]

I thought .coms do take the new date if they actually drop and are reregistered..

If you catch one on the drop and register it, it is deemed not to have dropped and retains its original registration date.
Ten years ago you could catch a com or two by entering the domain into a registrar's search at the time it dropped and registering it quickly. In a couple of places you could use a bulk registration tool for the job. Then most of the registrars got stroppy about that, and adopted measures to stop people doing it - which they would not and will not discuss.
At Namecheap, for example, if you caught one the system would not let you register it!
At GoDaddy, the bulk registration tool stopped working for catches, but the single line search was still useable for a while. And so on -

Registrars aren't allowed to do that in uk namespace (yet.. but I'm sure that'll be next for 123reg and nominet's 'friends') so have to have a new date.

The difference is that com registrars are still allowed to "taste" domains - put them up for 3 days without registering them.
Way back in time, if you ran a search for a domain at one registrar they would taste it - then, if you went to another registrar, it was unavailable for 3 days until the place where you first searched dropped it - so a lot of the time you had to go to the first place to buy it.
That practice was stopped a long time ago - but they are still allowed to keep the domains they catch "alive" by tasting them every 3 days without registering them, and that is what they do.​

 

[crabfoot]

For some reason this bit is not appearing in the post above -

It's just that most of them are warehoused by registrars who then auction them and therefore never actually enter available state..

You could still catch a few, in the past. What happened to kill small-time com catchers was that the 1&1 people realised there was money in it, and bought Moniker for catching purposes. After they moved into the market there was nothing left to catch.
​

 

[tifosi]

I thought .coms do take the new date if they actually drop and are reregistered. It's just that most of them are warehoused by registrars who then auction them and therefore never actually enter available state. Registrars aren't allowed to do that in uk namespace (yet.. but I'm sure that'll be next for 123reg and nominet's 'friends') so have to have a new date.

I thought that changed a couple of years ago when the 3 different types of registrar were brought in, and that the 'accredited registrars' could change the registrant of expired domains to their own. It's just that none do.