Yesterday, GoDaddy released its first domain sales list in five years. It’s a significant moment for a publicly listed company to willingly disclose data like this, and it’s only going to help the domain industry in the long term.
This Saturday, I’m going to do a special edition of the Sales Roundup analyzing some of the domain sales from that GoDaddy list, but there’s one piece of information that deserved an article of its own.
One of the more notable domain sales from GoDaddy’s list was that of VanInsurance.co.uk for $106,769. It was even more curious when we see that GoDaddy also sold VanInsurance.com for $100,000 – $6,769 less than the .CO.UK.
I’ll be looking at these two sales in closer detail on Saturday, but it seems that the seller of VanInsurance.co.uk is now looking for a more significant sum for a similar domain, VanInsurance.uk.
In 2014, the shorter .UK (not to be confused with the established .CO.UK) extension was released. If you already owned a .CO.UK domain, you had the right to register the equivalent .UK domain at any point up until June 2019 when these rights expired.
That means that owners of domains such as VanInsurance.co.uk were able to acquire VanInsurance.uk. I’m still not sold on the need or desire for a .UK extension that can easily be confused with the .CO.UK equivalent.
Nonetheless, they are in existence, and the owner of VanInsurance.uk is looking to cash in. After selling VanInsurance.co.uk for $106,769, they’re looking for $150,000 or more for the .UK equivalent.
I wonder whether the buyer of VanInsurance.co.uk was aware of the existence of the equivalent .UK domain. If another UK company acquires VanInsurance.uk, it could lead to some serious confusion between the two sites in the eyes of uninitiated consumers.
This speaks to the wider problems of trying to establish a .UK extension alongside the existing .CO.UK TLD. If you acquire one, you essentially have to acquire both, which could double your total purchase price.
Vaninsurance.uk isn’t really worth anything much. The extension is barely used in the UK and not seen as desirable. It is like comparing .com with .net.
Looks like the vaninsurance.com/co.uk people have decided to brand on vaninsurance.com and have bought the .co.uk for defensive reasons. They won’t buy the .uk.
Absolutely. I think they made the best decision by acquiring the .COM and .CO.UK combo.