UK domain names are now available for purchase, and we strongly recommend that you do this. At this stage, redirecting the domain to your site is not a priority; the most important thing is that you register the domain.

The ‘dot UK’ domains have been released by Nominet and are referred to as ‘the new shorter, sharper domain’ and brings Britain in line with the rest of Europe, for instance .fr in France and .it for Italy.

Don’t forget, when you register a domain for your business, try not to add the ‘Registrant’ as a person, but instead your company name; it becomes difficult to transfer ownership of domains if the person that registered it has moved away from the original company, for anyone who’s ever had to do this in the past – you’ll understand how painful and time-consuming this can be.We strongly recommend finding out whether you have a first refusal of the .uk equivalent to your existing domain. In some cases, some domains may be registered but with a different suffix, e.g., www.slightlydifferent.co.uk and www.slightlydifferent.org.uk.

If you want to see whether you have the rights to your .uk domain name, you can use the ‘rights lookup tool‘. We advise you to do this as soon as possible. The deadline for purchasing the .uk domain (if you have the rights to it) is June 2019. However, this might be easily forgotten—the last thing you want is your competitors snapping it up in the future!