.uk Domain Names Launched

In June, the ‘.uk’ top-level domain was launched. The .uk extension indicates an organisation in the UK, as opposed to the ‘.co.uk’ one, which has been used for many years to indicate a commercial organisation in the UK.



Most countries have domain suffixes that merely indicate the country of residence of the organisation, so the .co.uk suffix was always somewhat anomalous.



It is claimed that over time the .uk suffix will become the de facto standard for the domain names of UK organisations.



Given the clear opportunity this presents for ‘cybersquatting’, the Internet domain registries are offering the .uk domain names to the owners of the equivalent .co.uk domains in the first instance, provided the domain was owned prior to 8am on 10 June 2014. This option will be preserved for five years.



It is a simple matter to arrange registration and to have a redirect from the .uk domain to the domain holding your website.



For more information, see the Nominet website.