Insights / Choosing a name

.ie, .co.uk or .com: choosing an extension

TheDomainery · 29 October 2026 · 4 min read

Pick the extension your customers live under. For most small businesses in Ireland that's .ie, for Britain it's .co.uk or .uk, and .com earns its price only when you plan to sell beyond both. That's our ranking, and we'll defend it.

Google's documentation treats a country-code top-level domain as a strong signal that a site is meant for a particular country. It also notes that some countries restrict who can register theirs, so check the rules first. The practical effect is that a .ie address points your site at Irish searchers without any further setup.

The rules for .ie are worth reading before you fall for a name. The registry, IEDR, used to ask applicants to show a real and tangible connection to Ireland and a valid claim to the name. According to a William Fry note dated 22 February 2018, the claim-to-the-name requirement was dropped from March 2018, and anyone with a real and tangible connection to Ireland could register a .ie domain. The connection part stayed. So if you're a UK company that wants a .ie, check that you qualify before you commit, and check the registry's current wording rather than relying on a 2018 note.

British customers, we think, read .co.uk as home. We don't have a study for that either, so call it a hunch. The shorter .uk exists too, and we'd be comfortable with it, though we haven't checked how customers react to it.

.com is the default in people's heads, and that has value. If you'd like to be found by customers abroad, or you expect to be asked "is that dot com?", it's the safe choice. If a business can afford both, owning the .com as well stops a competitor taking it, which is a decent reason on its own.

Where we'd spend money first: the local extension with the name you want. Where we'd spend it second: the .com of the same name, if it's available at a sensible price.