Millions of businesses are about to lose their domains!

If you have a .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk, .plc.uk, or ltd.uk domain, the respective .uk domain has been reserved for you until 25 June 2019.

For example, our domain is hiddenmedia.co.uk, so hiddenmedia.uk was automatically reserved for us.

All .uk domains are the top-level domain for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and therefore a valuable asset for your business.

However, if you do not register your .uk domain by the end of June, on 1st July it will be released into the public domain and could be registered by anyone.

How to register your .uk domain?

The best way to secure your .uk domain is to get in contact, or log into your account, with your current domain registrar, as it will be much easier to point the DNS to your existing website.

If you need help with this, get in touch with us and we can help.

Which domain should I use?

This is a common question. Many businesses have multiple domains, such as .co.uk, .eu and .com.

So which should be your 'primary' domain? If you're a UK-based business, to date, you should use .co.uk. Many businesses make the mistake of using .com - this is a United States domain and Google search in the UK will generally favour a .co.uk domain over a .com.

Whether a trend emerges of UK businesses transitioning from .co.uk to the shorter .uk, will remain to be seen.

How to change domains?

Two words; "with caution".

We have undertaken a domain change for many businesses, but it's not something that should be done without great care and consideration.

If you've had your domain for a few years, it's well-established, has been registered for a reasonable period of time, has accumulated backlinks, earned domain authority and trust. These factors all weigh-into Google's algorithms to determine how well to rank your website.

If it's something that you're considering, get in touch and we can assess the pros and cons with you.