As you may be aware, .UK domain names are becoming available to purchase. These domain names were first offered by the registry, Nominet, to domain name registrants that held matching .co.uk or .org.uk domain names. The domain names that were not taken by those registrants are becoming available for third parties to register.
I previously wrote about SnapNames and its .UK auction, and I received an email from Sedo announcing it will be running a .UK domain name auction beginning tomorrow. Here’s what I was told about Sedo’s upcoming auction:
“Before the .uk names were made available to the general public on Monday, Nominet, the operator of .uk offered a .uk Rights of Registration (RoR) period July 1-5 to all registrars who successfully applied. You can read more in detail about this here:https://registrars.nominet.uk/uk-namespace/dot-uk/rights-of-registration/.
With this explosion of new domains into the market, Sedo is hosting an exclusive .UK Auction kicking off tomorrow. We have a sneak peek at the auction inventory for you, there’s over 1,000 domains up for grabs in this newly available extension, including keyword generics, short domains and more.Many of the domains have no reserve prices with higher reserves for very premium generic domains like telephone.uk, sunrise.uk, byte.uk, the list goes on.
.uk domains are the shorter and more concise TLD choice for the UK moving forward! These names make excellent purchases for those who do business or reside in the UK not to mention smart investment opportunities.”
Sedo’s auction will begin tomorrow (July 11) and run through July 18.
I am not sure if a registrant must have any sort of UK presence in order to register .UK domain names. Be sure to investigate further before you decide to bid because I am not familiar with the policy and could not find this information.
Too many dot whatever and nobody can keep track all of them except dot com
New gtlds are worthless.
Seems to be an unsourced fabrication that tries to defame new gTLDs.
#Ethan- show me your dot whatever domains and I will show you my high powered dot com domains.
My dot com domains like “BullS” will bring you down to your knees and you better wear a super duper diaper.
Thanks for the challenge. If you really have high powered .com domains, I congratulate you. But I prefer keeping my assets private.
Shiny new object of affection, this is not a .com world, but a world only if you know what your doing should you play in. Watch for more expensive renewals on these ones also.
Thank you, Elliot for covering this topic, we’re very excited to be able to offer such an auction event. We clarified the registration restrictions with Nominet and confirmed that a UK address is no longer required when registering a .uk domain.
I participated in the UK auction last week/this week and won some decent names, but I’m very disappointed as I received notice that I had won voice.uk, stream.uk, cam.uk, and I had paid and even built landing pages. 2 days later I receive notification that the domains were registered before me. Nominet support was very good, but this is why I still have little confidence in domain auctions. Was iit a database problem or did someone come later and make highers. They issued refunds, but that doesn’t take into consideration my time lost, etc
As far as the UK names on Sedo’s auction, I believe all of the names I DID get are better, except for some of the single letter domains.
absolutely hate domain auctions. Fine art, wine, vintage typewriters, yes — never have problems. But with domains, different story.
Funny cause I also got confirmation that I won voice.uk.. was celebrating already when I got a cancellation emails hours later. Guess not everything went as smooth as they hoped at Nominet.
Yes, then the usual crazy bidding in the last 3 minutes — one was at 1200 USD with 3 bidders, then closed at over 7000. I popped out after it went over 5000. We’ll see if this domain appears at a future auction for non-payment. Lack of transparency and zero repercussions for false bidding really are frustrating.