The shorter .uk domain was released on June 10th 2014. Nominet, the official registry for UK domain names, claims that the .uk domain is for everyone, and not restricted to particular kinds of website. This is different from the popular and trusted .co.uk and .org.uk domains, which are, generally speaking, reserved for businesses and organisations respectively. This may be one reason that the .uk domain was released, another being that having a .uk address gives a website the opportunity to create a sense of local identity, and gain the trust of web users.
If an international organisation with a branch in the UK has a .uk address, not only will their Google search results be higher in the UK, but UK users are more likely to visit it. If a shop has a .uk domain, it shows the online shopper that this shop is based in the UK, and less likely to charge more on those dreaded shipping costs. The same is true for bloggers, for example, who may wish to highlight their UK relevance with a .uk domain, and secure or grow their UK readership.
Another reason may be that new domain names mean more space on the web – with an already huge number of UK domains, there needs to be lots of domain possibilities so that new websites can be launched. This is, of course, good news, but existing websites do need to be careful that their established domain isn’t snatched away by a new website, or worse, targeted by cybersquatters – see below. This is why it’s highly important to make use of your website’s reserved .uk domain before time runs out.