.uk.vs .co.uk

Registered both, which should I use

[graeme_p]

I have registered [companyname].co.uk and [companyname].uk for a new business.

Which should I use, for websites and email. So far my thoughts are:

• .uk is shorter - fewer typos
  
• .uk is unfamilar, so gets attention
  
• .co.uk is more familar - fewer typos - people might thing a .uk is missing the .co
  
• .co.uk looks longer established (will most people realise?)
  
• I personally think .uk should never have been allowed - its only real purpose is to make more money for registrars
  

[engine]

graeme_p, I agree with everything you've said. It's only another layer of confusion for Joe public, imho

I'd stick with the .co.uk for a company for the time being.
If you choose to go with the .uk, configure the e-mail and redirects for the .co.uk in case people think as per your third point.

[Peter_S]

".co.uk" is definitively more classy, because it's THE historical extension for the UK.

As for typo, I wouldn't worry about it. First of all most people never type an address, they click, they tap on the screen, or they type the beginning of what t hey barely remember, and the web browser address bar which will auto complete/suggest.

[lucy24]

most people never type an address

most != all. Even the most obscure typo domain will get the occasional human visitor. Or a flurry of secondary human visitors, as when someone legitimately visits example.ca and then races to facebook to tell all their friends about example.com. (Only The Names Have Been Changed.)

[engine]

I think the problem occurs when somebody reads an address which appears to have been malformed, with the .co part missing, and it's not just a website - they could be typing an e-mail.

[jmccormac]

Go with what people recognise the most and 301 and alias the .uk to the existing .co.uk setup. There is a substantial number of .uk registrations in the .UK zone (around 600K, I think) but the majority is still on .co.uk registrations. Introducing the .uk did seem like a landgrab by the former board but I think that there's new management there now. (I am a Nominet member but concentrate on the tech/domain stats side of things).

Regards...jmcc

[RedBar]

One of my main sites is a .uk with the .co.uk pointing at it and, interestingly, it seems to be doing better in the SERPs than the .co.uk did and I mean the Google.com SERPs, not just co.uk

.uk is unfamilar, so gets attention

The UK government has been using .uk for quite some time now if you hadn't noticed.

Just in case you did not know, .uk supposedly can only be registered with a UK address, they do actually perform a check to ensure you are genuine as I found out when I wondered why mine wouldn't initially work, unlike .co.uk which any Tom, Dick or Harry can register.

Where the registrant is overseas an address for service in the UK is required.
PO Boxes are unacceptable in the address.

[graeme_p]

The UK government has been using .uk for quite some time now if you hadn't noticed.

True,I have been using gov.uk a lot as well. It did not really register because I am so used to .gov.uk. I suspect other people may be the same.

I am not really competing in the SERPS - I do not expect search engine traffic except from people who are specifically looking for the site or doing very narrow searches. Too competitive a niche to do more!

I think I will go with .co.uk and redirect the .uk. Its almost close enough to toss a coin.

Thanks for the answers. Particularly, @engine for reminding me to redirect email as well as web.

[IanTurner]

gov.uk is a second level similar to .co.uk, .me.uk, .ltd.uk etc and has been around for many, many years unlike the .uk tld which has only been available for the last couple of years.

[accurate]

I would use the .UK, forward the other domain to it.

If you can make the domain shorter, why not? :)

[piatkow]

I have posted elsewhere that a few people around who will imagine that anything that they are unused to will immediately empty their bank accounts. I recall a legit American business being called a scam site on a public forum simply because they used .us instead of .com.. Keep your public face as the old faithful .co.uk

While you are about it remember to grab your name on every major social media site even if you don't intend to use it.

[graeme_p]

Interesting points. I have gone with .co.uk so that is OK, and will grab the name on social media sites.

[moTi]

I personally think .uk should never have been allowed

i personally think .co.uk should never have been allowed - just like any other second level country specific domain for general use.

to allow domain registrations directly beneath .uk not until 2014 was a huge mistake. now it comes back to haunt these countries that initially wanted special treatment, as you see with the .co.uk vs. .uk inconsistency.

but because it was mandatory for years and people are used to it you brits have to stay with the more inconvenient .co.uk forever. a location disadvantage just like brexit.

[jmccormac]

Countries wanting special treatment? The country code TLDs (ccTLDs) are not controlled by ICANN and predate them by decades. Some of them were set up in the 1980s before the advent of the WWW. The ccTLDs generally have their own way of doing things and their subdomains tend to either have a com/net/org/edu/gov set of subdomains, the co, net, org, gov subdomains, a mix of the two and a lot of local geographical subdomains or just a simple model with no official subdomains. The .US ccTLD is a very complex ccTLD by comparison to most ccTLDs and has multiple official subdomains like .city.state.us and others. To people simply with experience of .COM, the ccTLDs are largely unknowns.

I'm not British but I can understand the choice of .CO.UK. The .UK ccTLD has approximately 9 million or so registrations in the .CO.UK subdomain out of approximately 10.5 million registrations. Only the .CN and .DE ccTLDs have more paid registrations.

The .UK approach was a power and money grab and and attempt to turn part of the .UK ccTLD into a managed and more expensive subdomain under the pretext of verifiability. I think it has about 600K registrations but there has been no overwhelming move to it by .CO.UK registrants.

And as for complete clusterfscks in the ccTLD world, one doens't have to look much beyond .EU's creation.

Regards...jmcc