Unfortunately I am new to the web, however I have spent lots of time reading up and I am nearly at the launch stage of my business website. The only thing I have not been able to find info on so far is whether or not there is any advantage to registering your domain name in the uk?

Basically I have been advised that hosting in the uk would be an advantage (correct me if I am wrong!) for a uk based business, due to servers being based in the uk etc giving an advantage in search engines.

Now does this matter when it comes to domain names? Would it be better to register my domain name with a uk registrar? Or would godaddy be ok?

Also I plan to register the .co.uk and .com versions of my business name. Would I be better having the .co.uk as the main site and the .com pointing to it or the other way around? I am just thinking of SEO really and what would be best? Initially the .com sounds better to me as a business name, however I want to get the best SEO results as possible!

Thanks in advance to anyone who offers advice...

If you are in the UK and you want to register a .uk domain I would strongly advise that you go through a UK company - that way everything is done under UK law which can save potential complications at a later stage. Also, I have yet to come across a non-UK registration company that fully understands the intricacies of the .uk system.

For .com it doesn't matter so much because you're under US law no matter what you do. I use a US registrar but would probably use a UK one if I was starting from scratch now - for the simple reason that my first point of contact would be someone in the UK rather than someone the other side of the world.

Hi Lubeca, thanks for answering so quickly.

I will probably go with the UK based service then for everything. I am looking at cheapdomainnames.co.uk at the moment but I can't seem to find any comments either negative or positive?, which I am slightly concerned about.

Has anyone had any good or bad experiences with this company?

For UK-based registrar, your best bet is http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ - they are a *little* pricey for com/net/org, but for .uk it's ok and they have very strong reputation in this board.

Good luck with your business!!!

I second 123-reg.co.uk for registering .UK domains.

I asked GoDaddy once how I would go about changing the IPS TAG. They didn't have a clue and told me I would have to see Nominet. :P

That's why I always recommend a UK company to register your .UK domains.

Hi, thanks for all the advice.

I have decided to go with 123-reg on the advice from your good selves! Now how do I go about changing the IPS TAG with 123-reg? Do you mean a UK registrar automatically does this for you as appose to a USA registrar? What exactly is an IPS TAG?

Suppose it's time to get back to the search function on the forum!!

Hi, thanks for all the advice.

I have decided to go with 123-reg on the advice from your good selves! Now how do I go about changing the IPS TAG with 123-reg? Do you mean a UK registrar automatically does this for you as appose to a USA registrar? What exactly is an IPS TAG?

Suppose it's time to get back to the search function on the forum!!

The IPS TAG (or "tag") is something you only have to worry about if you want to move away from 123-reg.

When a company becomes a registrar for .uk domains it gets given a "tag" - a short name (usually - but not always - an abbreviated version of the company's own name) which gets used to identify the registrar's account. The UK registry's official term for registars is "tagholder" rather than "registrar".

Changing the tag simply means moving a domain from one registrar to another. The normal way of doing this is to instruct the outgoing registrar to change (or "release") the tag to the new registrar.

If a tagholder doesn't know how to change a tag then that tagholder doesn't know what he is doing, and shouldn't be selling .uk domains!