New domain

Luckily, moving domains on the web doesn't involve cardboard boxes and heavy lifting but it can mean things being lost or broken. (Though I've been lucky in being able to use Scrutiny to clean up the links on the new site. Its new feature - checking the canonical href of each page - is a result of a subsequent need on my part).

The website is moving from the co.uk domain (which I've used since about 2000) to a new peacockmedia.software  home. This is because Google is treating the .co.uk domain as targeting the UK and there seems to be no way to change that.

I'm not sure how I feel about the vast number of new top-level domains. A couple of years ago I failed in a sniping match to secure peacockmedia.com as it became available for registration (and was then offered it for hundreds of pounds, which I wouldn't pay out of principle - there's something really wrong in all of this). I feel that it'll be more difficult for consumers to tell a legitimate website from a fraudulent one from a url. I also rather cynically feel that it's a money-making exercise - businesses (legitimate businesses as well as speculators) will feel obliged to snap up various suffixes.

But I'm hoping that the more international new domain will get better recognition by Google in countries other than the UK. Time will tell.