Everything you need to know about reserved .UK domain names

Everything you need to know about reserved .UK domain names

Zoe Brown

Zoe Brown
4th April 2019

You may have heard about reserved .uk domains, right of registration, and .uk rights. With the clock ticking to register reserved .uk domain names by the 25 June 2019, you may be hearing more about the .uk right of registrations if you own a .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk, .plc.uk, or .ltd.uk domain name over the next couple of months.

If you’re not sure whether right of registration affects you, how it works, and what exactly you need to do about it, fear not. We’ve complied everything you need to know in this post so you can be confident you are prepared for the changes in June.

What you need to know in just four bullet points:

If you’ve only got a few minutes to spare, here’s what you need to know about reserved .uk domains in just a few bullet points:

  • If you own a .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk, .plc.uk, or .ltd.uk, the matching .uk domain name may have been reserved for you until 25 June 2019.
  • You can see whether you already own the rights to a .uk domain here. 
  • If you have the rights to register a reserved .uk domain name, get in touch with your registrar to find out how you can register it.
  • After 1 July 2019 any reserved .uk domains that have not been registered will be released into the public domain and can be registered by anyone.

The details:

After we launched the new shorter, sharper .uk domain in June 2014, we reserved some of the matching .uk domain names. This means that if you own yourwebsite.co.uk, your equivalent .uk domain, so yourwebsite.uk, may have been reserved. The clock is ticking however, as the deadline to register these reserved domains is fast approaching.

If you own a .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk, .plc.uk, or .ltd.uk domain, you can check to see if the .uk equivalent has been reserved. If it has you can contact your registrar (or the person with whom you registered the domain) to find out how you can register it. 

You can find out more about .UK rights complete with some FAQs here. If you’d like to talk to one of our team you can get in touch via phone; + 44 (0)1865 332244 or email.  

Do you need to register your .uk domain?

If you are eligible to register a reserved .uk domain name, you may be asking yourself whether you really need it or what happens once you’ve secured it.

You don’t have to register your reserved .uk domain name, it’s entirely up to you. If you’re happy for someone else to register and use the .uk equivalent of your existing third level domain, you don’t need to do anything. It’s just good to be aware that from the 1st July 2019 any unregistered .uk domains that have been reserved for 5 years will become available for anyone to register. 

You may wish to consider registering your .uk domain equivalent for brand protection purposes, as it stops other businesses or competitors registering it. Some businesses may want to use their .uk domain to host special campaign pages. If you’re looking to take up your .uk rights on a domain but don’t want to utilise it, one of the simplest solutions here is to redirect your .uk domain to your existing website. This means if people type in yourwebsite.uk they automatically get redirected to your existing website; yourwebsite.co.uk. Setting up a redirection is something that can be done in your website CMS (content management system).

Please note the rights of registration period has come to an end on 25th June 2019.