More of a question for UK users I guess, though I’m curious on other views as well.
In the past we always had .co.uk for UK based websites, which was widely understood and accepted, almost irrespective of usage. For those who may not know .co.uk is short for company uk and primarily intended for business. Later on .uk came along as well, bringing it into line with most other countries like .fr or .nl etc. It’s shorter and quicker to type.
For a global audience I guess .com is always favourite, but I’m wondering on views regarding .uk vs .co.uk for websites aimed at a UK audience. All my clients seem to prefer .co.uk, yet I look around and see sites like nhs.uk or gov.uk.
I am not too thrilled about having to register both versions of every domain to stop copycats, but if you had to choose for your own business, which would you go for as the main site and why?
@Flashman, isn’t it more a habit than a need? It’s (as far as I’m aware) popular in the UK and its previous colonies. Its commonly used here in South Africa and I’ve seen it often with my colleagues in Singapore.
I think the argument for .co.uk is very much one of familiarity but that may also equate to greater trust. I’m basically wondering which one is more likely to have visitors click through when they see it on a search ranking.
Lately I’ve found myself buying a bunch of domains and I need quite a few spares for various purposes. The main reason I’m rethinking this though is that I’ve had a site online for a few years that is a .uk domain and does pretty well in the rankings. I have the .co.uk as well, which automatically redirects but wondering if I should reverse this.
The big theory a few years ago was that .uk would take over and become more popular but I am not so sure that is happening. This is all about branding really, however there would also be some issues with changing at this stage.
Does it really matter these days which top domain level you’re using? Myself I’m currently using: .com, .ae, .org, .fish, .nl and .mu. For most of them I got short, 8 character max names. I’ve never noticed top domains are influencing rankings. But I could be wrong as well.
Hi.
Simple (in my opinion).
Buy both, and direct one to the other, prioritising you preferred one.
Maybe I’m being simplistic, but I have both www.apswoodwork.uk and www.apswoodwork.co.uk
On unimportant sites used for testing etc I’m tending to buy .co.uk domains and leave it at that.
On one particular site I have it like you with .co.uk redirecting to .uk. My thought is whether or not I should reverse that now, so it goes to .co.uk. On one hand I’ve already had the .uk domain for a few years and it ranks well, but I’m building a new site with a whole new approach and wondering if .co.uk will be better perceived over the longterm.
I notice that when I tell clients a domain name as .co.uk they say OK, but when I say .uk they seem to pause and some still get it wrong. Luckily the redirect kicks in.
Hi.
Agreed, but for me a search ranking is of little concern as I use my site as a brochure more than to generate new contacts.
But I also get people asking “…just .uk?”
In fact, some web forms don’t accept .uk as a valid address.
That is an occasional issue with a bunch of top level domains. Especially it seems with Govt sites that use overkill poor dated validation.
Considering how many new TLD’s have been released in recent years there should be better support. We ran into this issue recently with a Council website. Luckly we had kept our older TLD domain and our old email addresses forwarded to our new ones.