[London, ENGLAND] According to domain name registration specialist
Afterdomains,
registering new .co.uk names has become more popular in
the U.K. than stealing cars.
Whereas someone steals a car every 30 seconds, there is a
new .co.uk domain name being registered every 20 seconds.
The figures, first issued by the U.K. naming authority
Nominet,
are a very good indication that the Internet
industry in the U.K. is still in a boom period. However,
the figure has dropped from 245,000 names registered during
March 2000 to a level of around 150,000 per month.
Afterdomains Business Development Manager Shakil Khan said
the huge March figure was caused by exceptional circumstances.
“In the first quarter of 2000 we saw the much publicized
sale of the domain Business.com for a staggering $7.5 million,
the highest paid for any domain yet. And in the U.K. we had the
Lastminute.com flotation which brought its own huge wave of
publicity,” said Khan.
The organization that keeps track of domain name statistics
worldwide is DomainStats,
which notes a total of 17.8 million domains registered worldwide
(as of July). Nearly 2 million of them — over 10 percent —
are .co.uks.
Most international dotcom companies require a .co.uk name, as
do most U.K. businesses. Even start-ups are now registering
.co.uk names as a first preference, partly because it is
becoming increasingly difficult to find a .com name that
is not already registered.
Afterdomains confirms the trend, saying: “It seems that snatching
up a great .com domain name isn’t the holy grail of e-commerce.”
That is good news for Web entrepreneurs, says Afterdomains,
especially as there are no three letter dotcoms left and 97
percent of the words in Webster’s dictionary appear to have
been registered as dotcoms.
