chris
Top Contributor
With the recent discussions on direct au registrations, as many others have said, implementation is going to be critical.
As someone that has invested in au domain names and advised clients to do the same, I've always believed in .com.au for Australian businesses. It has long been the premium commercial .au extension, the industry has also marketed it as such.
I know there are some net.au (or other) owners that will want the equivalent .au, but in my opinion, if .com.au owners have preference it will cover the vast majority of businesses that have invested in premium au names. To clarify, I know there are people that have invested in .net.au's and a few popular sites that use .net.au, but they are the exception. I'm happy to be corrected on this, but we can see the reported sales, and we all know that common examples of abc and whirlpool use .net.au.
There are a few questions I have that I'm keen on everyone's thoughts.
1) Will .au become the premium extension?
I think it's hard to say, but in a world of .anything, eventually anything other than domains with a single dot may look weird. It might not be happening yet, but it could. Personally, I wouldn't mind switching to dntrade.au. I'm not sure others think the same, but I know of at least a few people that have said they would too when chatting to website owners.
We had a discussion at a recent event where people were questioning if direct .au's will be the "better" extension. I don't know the answer to this, but interested in what others think?
2) Will this change strengthen or weaken the .au namespace?
As others have stated in the past few days, implementation is going to be critical. Australia has been lucky in that we've had a very strong local namespace.
In recent years we've seen browsers that don't display URLs and domains, Search Engine Results Pages being tested that hide domains, voice search, social, apps, and that's not even talking about all of the new extensions coming on the market. These are already impacting on the namespace and direct navigation in general.
I think the potential for consumer confusion if the .com.au holders aren't given preference will negatively impact on the uptake of direct .au.
Apart from the UK and NZ, what other models do people know of that have been rolled out, and what were the pros and cons?
That's just my 2c worth, interested to hear what people think.
As someone that has invested in au domain names and advised clients to do the same, I've always believed in .com.au for Australian businesses. It has long been the premium commercial .au extension, the industry has also marketed it as such.
I know there are some net.au (or other) owners that will want the equivalent .au, but in my opinion, if .com.au owners have preference it will cover the vast majority of businesses that have invested in premium au names. To clarify, I know there are people that have invested in .net.au's and a few popular sites that use .net.au, but they are the exception. I'm happy to be corrected on this, but we can see the reported sales, and we all know that common examples of abc and whirlpool use .net.au.
There are a few questions I have that I'm keen on everyone's thoughts.
1) Will .au become the premium extension?
I think it's hard to say, but in a world of .anything, eventually anything other than domains with a single dot may look weird. It might not be happening yet, but it could. Personally, I wouldn't mind switching to dntrade.au. I'm not sure others think the same, but I know of at least a few people that have said they would too when chatting to website owners.
We had a discussion at a recent event where people were questioning if direct .au's will be the "better" extension. I don't know the answer to this, but interested in what others think?
2) Will this change strengthen or weaken the .au namespace?
As others have stated in the past few days, implementation is going to be critical. Australia has been lucky in that we've had a very strong local namespace.
In recent years we've seen browsers that don't display URLs and domains, Search Engine Results Pages being tested that hide domains, voice search, social, apps, and that's not even talking about all of the new extensions coming on the market. These are already impacting on the namespace and direct navigation in general.
I think the potential for consumer confusion if the .com.au holders aren't given preference will negatively impact on the uptake of direct .au.
Apart from the UK and NZ, what other models do people know of that have been rolled out, and what were the pros and cons?
That's just my 2c worth, interested to hear what people think.