Giant surge in .uk registrations

Last week over 350.000 .uk domain names have (finally) been claimed by their rightful owner. Over the last 3 weeks combined, there were even well over one million .uk domain names registered. That’s much more than for example the 271.000 .uk names registered during the 52 weeks of 2018.

Almost exactly 5 years ago, direct registrations under .uk were launched. Prior to that time, only registrations under subdomains like .co.uk or .org.uk were possible. Owners of a .co.uk (or .org.uk, .net.uk,…) however had their name reserved for them free of charge for the first 5 years. Because of this, most stuck with their .co.uk domain name and didn’t bother registering (and starting to pay for) the same name under .uk.

Clearly people are becoming aware of the fact that the dead-line to claim the .uk name reserved for them is coming near. Anybody still holding a .uk-reservation, needs to register the domain name before June 25’th, or the name will become available to the general public during the start of July.