Is it still worth registering .com.au domains?

[Donald]

Forgive me for the noob question, but is it still worth registering .com.au domains or are these likely to be superseded by the new .au domains?

 

[Scott.L]

I doubt com.au will be superseded by .au - people will continue to trust the unique identifiers whilst .au will become a junk yard of unidentifiable parties seeking to hack the commercial success of .com.au

 

[johno69]

I voted purely off the title:
Is it still worth registering .com.au domains?
My vote would change if the "or are these likely to be superseded by the new .au domains?" was actually part of the poll.

 

[snoopy]

Forgive me for the noob question, but is it still worth registering .com.au domains or are these likely to be superseded by the new .au domains?

The uncertainly has hammered the market and that will continue for some time, and country codes generally are not keeping pace. Why bother with this extension when .com is doing so well?

As far as .au goes, it is junk, but the whole shemozzle will cost a decade of growth in .com.au.

Lastly registering anything is a bad idea, in any extension, these are names that nobody else on earth thinks are worth registering so the odds of success are low. Buy aftermarket or dropped names.

 

[Andrew Wright]

Why bother with this extension when .com is doing so well?

Com is great, but the entry costs are so much higher. Very difficult for a "noob" domain investor to break into that market without dropping a lot of cash...

 

[snoopy]

Com is great, but the entry costs are so much higher. Very difficult for a "noob" domain investor to break into that market without dropping a lot of cash...

Worthwhile names start at a couple of hundred dollars,

eg from twitter today,

https://twitter.com/joshuahreason/status/1128450432357896192

 

[Scott.L]

I'll go out on limb and say, com.au remains highly valued and competitive enough to have registrars catching names for themselves. So it's not all doom and gloom, yet.

 

[Donald]

Sorry I should have clarified that I was referring to registering a .com.au domain for the purpose of developing a website. If I was starting a local soccer club and was going to register a domain for its website, should I use [city]soccer.com or [city]soccer.com.au? I understand that .com.au may have some SEO benefits?

 

[snoopy]

Sorry I should have clarified that I was referring to registering a .com.au domain for the purpose of developing a website. If I was starting a local soccer club and was going to register a domain for its website, should I use [city]soccer.com or [city]soccer.com.au? I understand that .com.au may have some SEO benefits?

I've never seen evidence of any SEO benefit. Probably either is fine but the .com will be less hoop jumping to get.

 

[findtim]

com.au remains highly valued and competitive enough to have registrars...........

LOL, didn't anyone else get that ????

anyway, facts are NOBODY knows about a .au, to "rebrand" australia will take MILLIONSSSSSSSS, just look at woolies in victoria with safeway, it was 25 years after the take over ( i was there as a manager way back when) before woolies could rebrand victoria to just woolies and STILL another 4 years later people call it safeway, i even heard someone say the other day " it will always be safeway to me..."

thats why .au is a waste.

i think a .au will flop faster then uk and nz as .com.au is far stronger.

tim

 

[snoopy]

i think a .au will flop faster then uk and nz as .com.au is far stronger.

tim

Quite possible. What NZ had in its favour was they still had strong growth going into it, whereas the Australian namespace is teetering on decline in terms of raw numbers, whilst values are well down. Globally domains are fairly tapped out but the cctlds and new tlds seem to be doing far worse than .com.

 

[Scott.L]

The crazy thing is auDA may possibly tie up the "investor" with stupid policy restrictions on the most valuable names whilst the registrars think they're gonna make a killing out of its introduction...it's all just a bunch of magical Bullshit.

 

[chris]

Forgive me for the noob question, but is it still worth registering .com.au domains or are these likely to be superseded by the new .au domains?

Hi @Donald, it's not a noob question at all, I reckon initially it's what most people think - i.e. will the direct .au domain be the "premium" choice and supersede .com.au, but after you factor in what Australians are used to using, what businesses are already using, it's more complex than that. And then take into account how it gets rolled out, it's even more tricky.

Local businesses are still registering domains and building sites, and from what I see .com.au is still the most popular choice. We know that .com is king (and what some investors prefer etc.), but sometimes it's not an option.

 

[DomainNames]

"Most .uk registrants not interested in .uk"
http://domainincite.com/24093-most-uk-registrants-not-interested-in-uk

Take out the 1 million auto registered .uk by a Registrar against the owners permission and the numbers show the attempt to push in another competing additional direct .uk domain name has failed. This is Fact based on the actual amount of registrants who chose to do it and who actually paid.

Registrants are waking up to the scam scare campaigns of "blackmail" defensive registrations pushed onto them.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/...outraged_at_automatic_uk_domain_registration/

Customers of 123-Reg are experiencing a familiar feeling of annoyance, this time over a decision to automatically register them for .UK domains, which they will then have to pay for after two years.


In a letter sent to customers, seen by The Register, the company said the domains will be available to manage from November 2017. "These domains are absolutely free of charge for 2 years," it said.


The .uk domain was launched by Nominet in 2014, but as one 123-Reg customer noted, it hasn’t performed well. "Very few in the industry other than Nominet and registrars wanted it," he said.


The .uk variants of .co.uk domains are reserved until 2019 and can only be registered by the owners of the .co.uk domains. So only The Register could register theregister.uk until 2019.


Nominet are running a promotion where .co.uk owners can register the corresponding .uk variant for two years for free. This is an attempt to bolster the registration rate, he said.


"123-Reg have taken it upon themselves to take this one step further and automatically register the .uk variant for their customers who hold .co.uk domains," he said.


"As far as ensuring competitors don’t get the domains instead, there are still two years left on the 'right to register' period.


"That's plenty of time for Nominet and registrars to communicate the supposed benefits of .uk domains to owners of .co.uk domains, and to give them easy paths to registration.


"This looks like a cynical attempt to both raise the rate of registration, and make money from the inevitable raft of auto-renewals from those who don’t realise this is happening," he said.


Another said: "They are going to give me .uk domains that match my already owned domains unless I opt out. Then they will charge me for them in two years' time! I have to opt out, but their website isn’t working as usual. I personally think that this is completely unacceptable, and a complete con!"


The company recently angered customers by its plans to hike prices by 20 per cent later this year.


That followed a number of gaffes at the company over several years, including reports of databases running over unsecured access links, websites and email services down due to multiple DDoS attacks, and services generally being unavailable due to a host of outages.

 

[DomainNames]

Singapore has FREE .com.sg and FREE .SG for local businesses!

They have run Buy 1 get 1 FREE campaigns for years there also before.

Like Hong Kong their registrations registrations numbers are dropping even with years of FREE promotions and heavy discounting to try and pump up numbers.

 

[xwdomains]

 

[Data Glasses]

I am going to cash in my super and put it all into 3d .au names !!