.au numbers

[Bacon Farmer]

From the latest auDA insights, it's claimed 127,772 new .au domains have been registered.

https://www.auda.org.au/news-events-insights/reporting/au-insights

I'd love to know the break down between defensive registrations (connected to current .com.au domains) and brand new registrations.

 

[trellian]

Mid May I believe we hit 135k .au domains

From auDA chats they have advised that around 20% are newly registered, meaning that there is no com/net/id/asn/org/edy/gov version of that domain registered.

 

[Bacon Farmer]

So about 27,000 new domains and $216,000 of extra costs for current owners having to defensively register the .au version (@ $20 per domain x 108,000).

I wonder what the sunk costs across the industry have been.

 

[Blue Wren]

What's up with the .au only?

I've not followed along with this (what appears to be) cash grab.

Should I be obtaining the .au for all the com.au I have?

 

[Bacon Farmer]

Only the high quality domains you don't want claim jumpers passing off as your current website.

Perhaps for low quality domains, let them buy the .au, build it up and then upgrade to your better known and trusted .com.au domain later.

 

[Blue Wren]

Only the high quality domains you don't want claim jumpers passing off as your current website.

Perhaps for low quality domains, let them buy the .au, build it up and then upgrade to your better known and trusted .com.au domain later.

Thank you for the reply and information. Appreciated.

 

[Sim]

What's up with the .au only?

I have some personal domains which are on .com which I am considering moving to .au because my cost is cheaper (especially with a low AUD), it's arguably better to be on a .au for an Australian audience (but technically don't qualify for a .com.au) and these are low volume sites where SEO doesn't matter to me much, so the loss of existing ranking won't matter.

For any new personal domains - I will go straight for the .au and won't bother with .com or .com.au

I'm sure there are some people who might consider .com to be a better choice than .au - but I'm expecting that if your audience is largely Australian, and you don't qualify for a .com.au - then a .au will become the go-to domain of choice.

Of course, for domain resaleability, a .com is probably always going to be better than a .au because of the global audience.

 

[trellian]

Hi Sim, why would you not qualify for a com.au? All you need is an ABN or ACN and you can hold as many .com.au domains as you like. The eligibility rules were made simpler for domain investors and SEO users.

 

[Erwin]

I have some personal domains which are on .com which I am considering moving to .au because my cost is cheaper (especially with a low AUD), it's arguably better to be on a .au for an Australian audience (but technically don't qualify for a .com.au) and these are low volume sites where SEO doesn't matter to me much, so the loss of existing ranking won't matter.

For any new personal domains - I will go straight for the .au and won't bother with .com or .com.au

I'm sure there are some people who might consider .com to be a better choice than .au - but I'm expecting that if your audience is largely Australian, and you don't qualify for a .com.au - then a .au will become the go-to domain of choice.

Of course, for domain resaleability, a .com is probably always going to be better than a .au because of the global audience.

Interesting angle, thanks for your insights

 

[trellian]

We are over 165,000 direct .au domain registrations as of today.

An article on 2022 and 2023 forecast is on domainer.com.au here with some detailed stats.

 

[Horshack]

You would have to assume that there's going to be a flood of late registrations just before the priority allocation period ends in September