Domains registered in first week — 41,000 .UK
41,000 .uk domains registered during massive drop of second level domains.
Over 41,000 second level .uk domain names were registered the prior week, the first week they were available to people that didn’t have a matching third-level .uk domain.
Back in 2014, .UK namespace overseer Nominet started allowing people to register second level domains such as example.uk. Ahead of that, they had to register third level domains such as example.co.uk.
For five years, owners of existing third level domains were grandfathered and could register the matching second level domain.
The grandfathering period has ended and the second level domains are now available for registration by anyone.
Nominet states Z.uk was the most contested domain released the prior week. 80 registrars tried to register it on Friday. (Registrar “Dmitry Morgan” snagged it. That’s not a public registrar.)
Other highly contest domains include law.uk, k.uk and wedding.uk.
Of the 1.8 million newly-released second level domains, 2.26% were registered in the first week. There are a total of 3.65 million second level .uk domains registered so far.
