What a year it was! Now to some of the highlights.
DIRECT .AU GOES LIVE
At the top of the list was the launch of direct .au that resulted in 716,278 .au domain names registered in 2022. That is a decent 23% of the .com.au registered domains. Impressive when compared to .co.uk and .uk which after many years is only at 14%.
The launch of .au created a run on many other .au domains especially .com.au but also on .net.au and id.au for those that had priority rights for the .new .au.
.au Domains name registrations timeline up to December 2023
Final numbers by extension type:
| TLD | December 2022 | December 2021 | Change |
| .com.au | 3,111,001 | 3,067,704 | +43,297 |
| .au | 716,278 | 0 | +716,278 |
| .net.au | 218,867 | 216,336 | +2,531 |
| .org.au | 74,214 | 75,145 | -931 |
| id.au | 12,971 | 12,942 | +29 |
| asn.au | 3,090 | 3,122 | -32 |
.com.au only saw a growth of 43,297 extra domains, which is generally a good number, the only bigger year was the year prior thanks to Covid induced need for more domains which saw an increase of 159,646 extra .com.au domains created in the 2021 year.
Interesting parts is an actual growth for net.au domains, where for years this space has seen a constant decline. Many domains were registered with the hopes of securing .au rights. We can safely assume now that .au is live, this decline of .net.au will now resume as many owners will continue to let .net.au domains expire and there definitely is a lower demand for new .net.au domains as this demand has been moved over to .au domains.
An interesting (concerning) development noticed was a REDUCTION in the overall .com.au numbers from November 2022 to December 2022, saw a drop of 8,016 names in total. This means that far more names expired/dropped in that month in comparison to the number of new domains that were registered. Historically this does not happened often and when it does definitely not by such a substantial number. Will be interesting to see if this trends continues and if this is due to the launch of .au domains that are easier to register.
DOMAIN SALES
Domain sales in other extensions continued to be strong in the 1st half of the year with a slight contraction in the 2nd half.
A great industry write up from many of the Domain Veterans and Domain Companies were recently posted by Ron Jackson from DN Journal. Worth a read to see how the global domain market performed in comparison.
Many great sales were reported in 2022 and many unfortunately were under NDAs. Many great domain sales were posted here at Domainer on prior articles. Overall 2022 was the strongest year on record for domain sales and we can already see that 2023 is likely to surpass those numbers. Demand for great domains is up as companies start to realise the value a great domain can make to their over all business.
Domain marketplace platforms like Above.com have seen an influx of demand for .au and .com.au domains. The size of the .au after market has grown substantially and there are more domains listed for sale than ever before.
REGISTRAR MARKETSHARE
2022 saw clear winners and losers in the domain Registrar space. Notable movements:
1. Synergy Wholesale with the biggest gain in domains under management, well done!
2. Drop.com.au moving up 2 spots in rankings to rank 7, over taking 2 traditional powerhouses Melbourne IT (Webcentral) and CSC with domain names under management. Considering that Drop’s focus is on Domain Investor space this is a rather a very special achievement.
3. As a group, Trellian based registrars including Drop, Netfleet, Yexa (Above.com) etc moved up to rank 6 taking over Tucows.
4. Tucows saw the biggest decline with around 35,500 fewer domains under management.
5. Melbourne IT is a concern and only had a slight increase all thanks to the launch of .au. Without this a concerning result for this power brand which I hope new management can turn this around.
| GROUP | REGISTRAR | DOMAINS | TOTAL |
| Web.com | Web Address Registration Pty Ltd (crazydomains.com.au) | 925,482 | 925,482 |
| GoDaddy | GoDaddy.com LLC | 866,740 | |
| GoDaddy | Wild West Domains LLC | 5,575 | |
| GoDaddy | UniRegistrar Corporation | 4,478 | 876,793 |
| CentralNic | Domain Directors Pty Ltd trading as Instra | 715,047 | 715,047 |
| VentraIP | Synergy Wholesale Pty Ltd | 608,129 | 608,129 |
| 5GN | Netregistry Pty Ltd | 389,685 | |
| 5GN | Webcentral Group Ltd (Melbourne IT Ltd) | 117,432 | 507,117 |
| Trellian | DROP.com.au Pty Ltd | 122,845 | |
| Trellian | Netfleet.com.au pty Ltd | 8,311 | |
| Trellian | Yexa.com.au Pty Ltd (Above.com) | 5,794 | |
| Trellian | Domain Shield Pty Ltd | 2,918 | |
| Trellian | Fabulous.com.au Pty Ltd | 2,295 | |
| Trellian | Help.com.au Pty Ltd | 367 | |
| Trellian | DNTrade.com.au Pty Ltd | 188 | 142,718 |
| Tucows | Tucows Pty Ltd trading as OpenSRS | 140,067 | 140,067 |
| CSC | Corporation Service Company (Aust) Pty Ltd | 86,118 | 86,118 |
| DDNS | Cheaper Domains Pty Ltd | 16,168 | |
| DDNS | Discount Domain Name Services Pty Ltd | 14,819 | |
| DDNS | Information Brokers Pty Ltd | 756 | 31,743 |
| TPG | Connect West Pty Ltd | 18,705 | |
| TPG | Westnet Pty Ltd | 6,676 | 25,381 |
| Terrific | Terrific.com.au Pty Ltd | 18,676 | 18,676 |
| MarkMonitor | MarkMonitor Corporate Services Inc | 15,716 | 15,716 |
| EuroDNS | Domain Central Australia Pty Ltd (Fluccs) | 15,087 | 15,087 |
| Micron21 | Micron21 Data Centre Pty Ltd | 7,195 | 7,195 |
| GoHosting | GoHosting Pty Ltd | 5,862 | 5,862 |
| Momentous | Rebel / NameScout | 5,604 | 5,604 |
| Safenames | Safenames Ltd | 2,554 | 2,554 |
| Internetx | InterNetX GmbH | 1,923 | 1,923 |
POLICIES / AUDA
Where should we start… Lets just say that auDA have had their hands full in 2022. And this was even with the Registrars bearing the brunt of the masses of complaints received due to .au eligibility.
More vexatious complaints were received than ever before and the confusion about who was eligible for a .au and and who was not did not help matters.
As a Registrar the cost to support .au was staggering with all the eligibility rules with Category 1 and Category 2. We are still not sure about all the policies and how to handle an application for a contested .au when the registrar of record changes on a domain. auDA are still formulating policies which is a concern that they do not have all of this ready for registrars to implement.
The one thing that was really disappointing to see was the absolute waste of Tax Payer funds being spent by the Australian Government making multiple applications for the same .au domain. I am sure that auDA was happy to get the extra cash from the Government for nothing but as a tax payer this was frustrating to see as not only was this a total waste but also bad for end users that now need to fight with various Government departments to get the rights for the .au domain when most of them have the .com.au domain.
2023 AND BEYOND
1. Big Surprise was that .au domains have traffic and as a result are making monetization revenues way more than expected. Some domains have already paid for their registration costs, which is a great news for the whole investor space as not only is there a demand to buy them but many names come with traffic making them even more valuable.
2. Domain sales are hot. Various sites including Domainers and Above are reporting more and more sales of .com.au and .au domains. There are many domain marketplaces to generate sales such as Above, Afternic, Dan, Sedo to name a few. Some good news Above.com is planning to launch multi currency support that will enable domain sales to be in AUD and not just in USD which most domain sales platforms have traditionally only offered.
3. Uptake of direct .au domain registrations is forecast to continue to rise at a rate that even auDA did not anticipate. Making .au names easier to register without the need for a valid ACN/ABN is definitely making a huge difference.
4. I believe this year is where the Registry services goes up for tender again. Identity Digital (Afilias) the current Registry operator needs to go through the tender process to keep this contract, which I am sure that many others will be eager to jump in contention. Will be interesting to see what happens, but as a Registrar we hate change unless there is a substantial cost saving. Unfortunately a change to the Registry Operator is just an unnecessary cost to Registrars that they will never be able to recoup. Any registration renewal costs reductions are in most cases passed down in full to end users so we never see any cost reductions, just migration costs.
5. SCAM WARNING – worth making everyone aware of an increase in UBUs (Unautorised Business Use) and registration scams that are targeting AU domains and seem like for email/identity theft scams. auDA are aware but are not on top of it. I suspect that they are understaffed but I can also see that they prefer not to be proactive and be more re-active instead. I should note that they do act quickly when one is reported to them, so that is great. We feel that cyber security is more important than ever before, and I would like to see auDA to be more proactive and combat this new spate of scams faster. They have the ability to do much better, so lets hope that auDA is taking this seriously as non action is to the detriment of Australians being defrauded.
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