Trifega are one of the UK’s largest domain banking companies and seem to just hoover-up high value .co.uk domains. I have noticed recently on a few domains I have been monitoring that have been registered by Trifega, that they are only registering .co.uk version of the domain although the .uk version is free to register.
Are big domain companies really ditching .uk?
I first recorded this trend a few months ago when I made a post about notorious domanier Garth Piesse letting all his .uk registered domains expire whilst retaining rights .co.uk version. It would seem that Trifega are following a similar methodology and concentrating purely on .co.uk domains.
It should be noted that this is the actions of only two domineers and not the market itself, but it is interesting to say the least. I have seen evidence of many other domain flippers and bankers registering .uk domains like crazy. Even if they do not own the .co.uk.
Are .uk domains still worth buying?
At the moment .co.uk versions of domains are selling for much higher prices than the .uk versions if sold separately. The ideal package is to have both the .co.uk and .uk vsersion of the domain or rights to the .uk version of the domain. I don’t see this changing any time soon with the current market trends.
What this does mean is there is opportunities to register some very popular .uk versions of domains.
What does this mean for .uk in the future?
I see this an opportunity for both domain flippers, developers and business owners. If the big players are leaving half of the UK domain market unregistered that this could make .uk domains a place for profit, growth and creativity. If I was starting a businesses I would have absolutely no qualms about starting a site using .uk domain if the .co.uk was owned by a domain collector. Who knows? It may even be that as tons of .co.uk domains are left collecting dust in domain banks, the .uk version can flourish in this fast moving industry,
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Garth Piesse said before that he had registered around 8000 .uk domains and only sold one, so it’s not profitable for large portfolio owners to keep .uk version
Thanks for your comments Islam. I think we are still in the early stages of .uk domains. I’m in no hurry to drop mine. I see a lot of domainers registering the .uk versions that Garth and Trifega et al are letting drop. It will be very interesting to see what happens.