Back in June 2014, the UK’s domain name registrar Nominet opened up the .uk domain name for use. When doing so, they gave existing domain owners a five year window to register their address with the new domain, if they so wished.

This applies to the following web domains: .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk, .sch.uk, .plc.uk, .ltd.uk.

For example: if your web address is www.MyBusiness.co.uk, you had five years to decide whether you wanted to register www.MyBusiness.uk as well.

This five year window ends on June 25th 2019. If the .uk domain is not taken up, it will be available to the public from July 1st 2019.

Whatever you decide to do, it will not affect your existing domain name and website.

You may decide that taking the .uk domain will help you protect your brand and name in the event of misuse by third parties, or you may be relaxed about the prospect and decide to leave it open to the public.

See if a domain is registered

You can use Nominet’s WHOIS tool to see whether a particular domain is registered.

More information

Read more information on registering a .uk domain on the Nominet website.