600 government sites for sale. Opportunity to make money?

[3Six]

In the news today is the report that the UK government is getting rid of hundreds of websites to save money. Some are .gov.uk domains that are obviously not available to you and me.

Of the other sites, there must be plenty that have huge numbers of .gov.uk and .edu backlinks.

lovechips.co.uk is one example with link backs from domains like caerphilly.gov.uk, communities.gov.uk, london-fire.gov.uk and others.

Some of these sites must have a bit of decent traffic too.

They are not going to be listed on Flippa, I bet so where does one go to buy or bid for these sites?

[tke71709]

I read an interesting blog post about this.

Are people going to go around replicating the data found on these sites and then approach the original linkers to the sites and suggest that they link to them instead?

Good to see you back 3six, I was just wondering to myself yesterday where you were off to.

[3Six]

Was out of the country, I'm afraid, and will have to go away again soon.

An AMAZING amount seems to have happened here in my absence! No way I can catch up.

[BritishARMY]

Any idea as to what happened to these domains or where they could/can be purchased?

[DomainMagnate]

This is quite interesting, gvt sites always had strong backlink profiles and great seo history.

[Kay]

There's a piece about this in Private Eye (No. 1268, p7). It lists several that will be kept on such as lovechips, lovepork, etc. The Eye also says, "...it will also be keeping the indispensable beefyandlamby.co.uk!" I checked that one out and it redirects to a recipe magazine site, "Simply".

I tried to check the Who Is and it says the site is owned by the Meat & Livestock Commission.

I'm not sure if they've been selling off the domains or what. Surely there should have been some kind of public offer before selling off public assets.

Anyone know where there's a list of those for the chop, and better still, as BritishARMY asks, where they can be purchased?