.com, .co.uk or?

Uther

Uther

Uther

Soldato
Joined
16 Jun 2005
Posts
24,149
Location
In the middle
I'm thinking of starting a small business soon, as a sole trader/self employed. As well as selling at certain shows I would be selling mainly online.
So, for the website would it be better to go for one of the above, or one of the new addresses available (.me, .co etc) or doesn't it really matter?
 
.com

+ Better to look at
+ International look and feel
+ You'll never think "Damn wish I had a better domain"
- More expensive (but hardly a lot of money in the grand scheme of things
- Harder to hide your details from a WHOIS lookup*

My opinion? Buy both but redirect the .co.uk to .com!

* Your details can be hidden but you have to ask the domain provider to do it, most charge a few £ per year, some do it for free, and they essentially just re-register it to their own details.
 
There is a degree of professionalism with regards to the other, less common options.

Go with one of the main 2 I say. :) But either or doesn't really matter.
 
Both, ie - Don't buy a .co.uk if the .com is already owned. Also buy .net if possible.

Reason for this is people will often target you to steal traffic via search engines, or potential traffic may end up in the wrong place through mistyping.


edit: as someone else said, redirect co.uk to .com, .com for everything, everything else just point at .com (unless of course you are a big multinational :))
 
Don't know what 123-Reg are like these days but I found it a complete nightmare to move my domains away from them a couple of years ago. Hoop jumping and some of them ended up offline for a prolonged time because they messed up the process. I'd not immediately recommend them, for that reason.
 
123 were perfectly fine for me transferring domains, so I would imagine you had a one off experience.

Go with whoever offers the best package. Like I said in my above post, some providers will hide your details for free on .com domains.
 
DiscoDave said:
Infinite loop?
Click to expand...

HTTP Error 418. Look it up...

Jonny69 said:
Don't know what 123-Reg are like these days but I found it a complete nightmare to move my domains away from them a couple of years ago. Hoop jumping and some of them ended up offline for a prolonged time because they messed up the process. I'd not immediately recommend them, for that reason.
Click to expand...

I'd recomend Hover to anybody wanting to register domains.
 
Even with the barrage of new tlds, .com is still highly desirable, however with speculative tld purchasing still running rampant it's still very, very hard to find anything not being squatted on. This is particularly a problem for good brands which tend to be short and snappy. Remember that nobody, ever, ever, visits your fqdn. Most people wiill type a navigational query in to google, so it's all theoretically defunct; don't rule out the new tlds.
 
Last edited:
IMO I would get .com as the main, .co.uk and .net redirected to the .com incase of mistypes or someone trying to steal your traffic. They don't cost a lot so might as well
 
Buy the .com .co.uk and the .uk version of the same domain if you are using it for a business. If it is a UK business use the .co.uk one primarily at the moment, when people get used to seeing .uk change that to the primary one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom