Over 50,000 .UK registrations in 24 hours, including Sainsburys.uk, Bentley.uk and Burberry.uk

Within 24 hours of opening for registration, new, short .uk web domains topped the sales charts. More than 50,000 domains were registered, making this one of the fastest selling new domain releases on record, and beating the first day sales for all of the current batch of new generic Top Level Domains by a large margin. Of course these are not directly comparable.

“Consumers and brands alike are showing their trust in .uk domains, with our registration rates climbing to ten times the typical daily rate.  We’re thrilled with the response, which shows the excitement people feel about the shorter, sharper domain within the trusted .uk namespace ,” comments Eleanor Bradley, Chief Operating Officer at Nominet.

Following British icon and tech enthusiast Stephen Fry’s switch, Nominet’s sales channel – domain name registrars – have seen phenomenal interest in the new .uk domains and the rate of registration climbed throughout the first working day of its launch. Brands including Sainsbury’s, Bentley and Burberry were among those to register their short .uk domains within the first few hours of availability.

Over ten million existing UK domain holders are being offered first choice on the shorter equivalent of their current address. Nominet will be contacting these customers to ensure they’re aware of their opportunity to exercise this right.

Sold.Domains

About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

10 comments

  1. Did you register any? Its practically impossible outside the uk and if owners of .co.uk and all the rest have picks till 2019, I see litigation and take backs everywhere

  2. To register a .uk domain you need a postal address (no P.O. Box) in the UK. With co.uk and org.uk names this was not a requirement. Non-UK residents with .co.uk domains will have a difficulty to register the corresponding shorter .uk name.

  3. Most good registrars offer a trustee service for a reasonable fee.

    • So you use a trustee service which is a long shot in this case. How do you mitigatethe risk of a .co.uk domain owner coming after you before 2019? Moving to the UK? No that won’t save you!

      • You can’t register any .uk domain that has a matching .co.uk already registered.
        You can only do that after 2019 and if the .co.uk owner hasn’t registered it.
        Only the .co.uk owner can register a .uk domain.

        Before 2019 you can only register .uk domains that have no .co.uk or .org.uk etc. domain registered.

  4. “With co.uk and org.uk names this was not a requirement. Non-UK residents with .co.uk domains will have a difficulty to register the corresponding shorter .uk name.”

    If what you say is correct they are against the European law. UK citizens can register domains in other EU countries so they are against the law, if what you say is right.

  5. @bul

    You seem to be confused. All i said is that one can use a trustee service to comply to the rules of only UK based residents / businesses or whatever bul-shit they come up with 😉

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