.Net domains, opinions for a UK business?

[Martin P]

What are your opinions of these for a UK business?
The .co.uk one is taken, and the guy wants £1,000's for it?

Cheers

[awebapart.com]

Although the original remit of .net domains was for network providers, since .net has little restriction on usage, it has been adopted by website owners for other reasons (as an alternative to .com), and can have the general public perception of meaning "something on the web/net", "so and so on the net", "networking (as in the human form of networking)", etc. For example:

open2.net, channel4learning.net, coventrytelegraph.net, birminghampost.net, theinquirer.net, scienceforums.net, whatdvd.net, chestercityfc.net, celticfc.net, eurogamer.net, freelancers.net, chrismoyles.net, leedsmusicscene.net, craftanddesign.net, sourceforge.net, gamedev.net, (one of our clients used .net because other versions were taken, an artist, royward.net)

Whether you should go for the .net version might depend on what the other versions are being used for, or whether they are not being used at all, just parked, and what the actual name is (are there any other conflicts with company names, what happens when you currently google the name, etc). The other thing to consider is whether hyphenated versions are available if it is more than a one word domain.

[FireFleur]

.net.uk I think was removed a few years back as far as new registrations are concerned, it may be possible to get one but I think they are quite expensive.

There is me.uk :)

The nominet site is awful, you cannot find a good list anywhere of the .uk prefixes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uk

Oh well wikipedia does the job, where the official site drops the ball :)

[sm1]

In appearance and saying to people, I think they're ok. Better than the .mobi and .eu and allsorts of other types available!

[JustOneUK]

Firstly, Great post above from Paul.

I'd much rather get an alternative .co.uk domain than a .net, but I guess it's down to the actual domain you have in mind. If property.net were available I'd buy it.... if it's huddersfieldaccountants.net then I wouldn't bother and go for huddersfield-accountants.co.uk instead :p

Just my 2c's

James.

[Martin P]

Although the original remit of .net domains was for network providers, since .net has little restriction on usage, it has been adopted by website owners for other reasons (as an alternative to .com), and can have the general public perception of meaning "something on the web/net", "so and so on the net", "networking (as in the human form of networking)", etc. For example:

open2.net, channel4learning.net, coventrytelegraph.net, birminghampost.net, theinquirer.net, scienceforums.net, whatdvd.net, chestercityfc.net, celticfc.net, eurogamer.net, freelancers.net, chrismoyles.net, leedsmusicscene.net, craftanddesign.net, sourceforge.net, gamedev.net, (one of our clients used .net because other versions were taken, an artist, royward.net)

Whether you should go for the .net version might depend on what the other versions are being used for, or whether they are not being used at all, just parked, and what the actual name is (are there any other conflicts with company names, what happens when you currently google the name, etc). The other thing to consider is whether hyphenated versions are available if it is more than a one word domain.
Thank you for this, lots of good information there

[MartCactus]

I'd much rather get an alternative .co.uk domain than a .net, but I guess it's down to the actual domain you have in mind. If property.net were available I'd buy it.... if it's huddersfieldaccountants.net then I wouldn't bother and go for huddersfield-accountants.co.uk instead :p


I think this is spot on. We have seen clients buy a .net domain (or other non .com/co.uk ones like .biz) because they felt it was a great domain but couldn't get the .com or .co.uk. The problem is that they then promote this domain, get existing customers who return etc, but 50% of those people forget it was a .net, and instead go to the .co.uk or .com. If they are lucky they'll search in google and eventually find it - but most just assume the site has gone or been taken over.

If your choice of .co.uk or .com is taken I think its better to come up with a new choice that isn't taken, than to buy a second rate suffix like .net and end up sending much of your custom to your competitors by mistake.

[midgetman]

I always buy the .co.uk and the .net, they are cheap enough and ieven if you never use it, it stops someone else using it.

[NuBlue]

£1000 does not sound too bad, especially if the domain has been registered for a while and has had some content on it.

If so it will probably save you more than £1000 in the long run because you will benefit from any existing traffic the domain recieves and any links it already has pointing to it. May be worth asking the seller this?

EDIT:
just re-read your post and you did say 1000's...... so maybe this is a little Pricey!

[quikshop]

There is also an issue of SEO. We're conducting an SEO experiment with two online shops (http://www.geran.co.uk/internet_marketing_case_studies__part_one.aspx?aid =21), one with a .co.uk and the other with a secondary domain, in this case a .uk.com.

It was interesting to note that the .co.uk got indexed by Google a whole week ahead of the other and is so far racing up Google in comparison with a very poor showing from the .uk.com shop.

Now its only anecdotal evidence, there are lots of factors at play but its an interesting observation none the less.

I'd be interested to hear any other thoughts on this.

[Martin P]

£1000 does not sound too bad, especially if the domain has been registered for a while and has had some content on it.

If so it will probably save you more than £1000 in the long run because you will benefit from any existing traffic the domain recieves and any links it already has pointing to it. May be worth asking the seller this?

EDIT:
just re-read your post and you did say 1000's...... so maybe this is a little Pricey!
:) It was up for £4000 but he would now take £3250!

[C.Pearse]

I can only think of Virgin.NET (http://www.virgin.net/) off hand.

I second the idea of trying to hyphenate the domain name.

Failing that, you could think about using subdomains and country code top-level domains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country-code_top-level_domain) to spell the word, for example: del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/).

Cheers
Chris