Direct Registrations on .UK are Available as of Today!

We've all heard of .CO.UK, the country code domain extension of none other than the United Kingdom (UK). .CO.UK happens to be the fourth most popular domain extension in the world, coming in just behind .COM, Germany's .DE, and .NET. Until now, registrations on .UK were not allowed (except for a few websites), making .CO.UK the most popular choice for registrants from the UK. Last year, .UK's registry Nominet announced that it decided to allow direct registrations on .UK starting in the summer 2014 and as of today, summer - and .UK - is here!

For the people that own the over 10 million .CO.UK domains that have been registered, don't worry! Nominet is giving .CO.UK owners the first rights to their domain name on .UK. In fact, .CO.UK owners have the rights to their .UK for the next five years - until 6/10/19 7:59 UTC to be exact. For those .ORG.UK and .ME.UK owners, you may also have rights to your .UK domain name, but only if no one owns the .CO.UK and, in the case of .ME.UK, also if no one owns the .ORG.UK. The only difference in priority occurs if, for example, the .ORG.UK was registered before 10/28/13 23:59 UTC and the .CO.UK was registered after that date. In this case, .ORG.UK has priority over .CO.UK. If you aren't sure who has the rights to your domain name (or the domain name you had in mind), the best way of checking who has the rights to it is via the .UK rights checker.

For those of you who are looking to register your .CO.UK, .ORG.UK, or .ME.UK domain name that you have rights to on .UK, simply use our search, add it to your cart, and make sure you enter the same registrant name you used before on checkout. This will ensure our system sees that you are the correct owner of your .UK domain name.

For those of you who are looking to register a brand new domain on .UK, our search results will label the .UK domains that have a "right to registration" by someone else. This notice will help you find the available .UK domains to register. Please note that if you register a .UK domain with a "right to registration" and you are not the correct owner your order will be cancelled.

What are you waiting for? Now is your chance to get your domain name on the shorter .UK!

Post by Robyn Norgan