On 4 October 2022 – a new new era dawned for the .AU domain space. Over 2.5 million direct .au domains were made available to the general public. For 6 months these domains were able to be registered and or locked by the existing registrants of other .au domain extensions such as: .com.au, .net.au, .org.au, .id.au, .asn.au, .edu.au, .gov.au domain holders. Just over 500,000 domain were however claimed and locked, the rest were left for anyone else to go out and register.
In effect direct .AU domains is an evolution of the Internet in Australia. It is about growing opportunities and reducing barriers to entry for businesses, organisations and individuals across Australia to own a .au domain name. Currently .com.au domains require an existing and active ACN or ABN or Trade Mark. The new direct .au domains only require Australian presence.
Less restricted by regulatory requirements, generic, place and personal names were made available – many for the first time – in a shorter format. Instead of Drop.com.au, you now have Drop.au
Many of the 4 Million+ .AU domain name holders will continue to use their existing brand. Some will use the new, shorter .AU direct version, some will just redirect one to the other.
The opportunities for Australian residents are exciting, as new generic .AU domains – hotly contested or novel – will become future businesses or new brands for existing businesses. Proud Australian families and individuals are now able to host their email or personal blogs on your-name.au, unencumbered by the sometimes confusing .com.au .net.au that require ACN/ABN/Trade Marks, matching business names etc.
All of this came to a head on 4 October.
Drop.com.au customers and fans were well informed in advance and took advantage of our Special Back order and Drop Auction, but more about that in a minute.
Utilising their superior drop-catching software, but also providing clients with a sample list of 200,000 prospectively “dropping” new .AU domain names along with custom keyword lists of domains, Drop ran a ‘Special Drop’ auction.
What were the results:
There were 80,000+ .AU domain names registered in a single day.
Drop.com.au had a 83%+ success rate on those domains with backorders. Disclosed by their team, this should have been higher had all their registrar connections worked, but due to some tech issues a few of their registrars did not even try to catch any of the names. So a few other back order services got a free run at a decent number of domains names. Despite this Drop was super excited with the results and have had many happy clients that picked up some amazing domain names.
The vast majority of the domains picked up were for only $10 Drops starting bid price.
Is the Gold Rush Over?
Definitely not! Over the last few days thousands of domains are still being hand registered. There were after all 2.5 million domain names released and also many names that used to have restrictions such as names can now be registered.
Secondly the Above domain market place has reported that they can not keep up with new domain inquiries and have closed many sales. We know that within days over $100k in domain sales were already made. Drop.com.au and Above.com domain brokers are swamped with leads and offers, so if you are interested in a new .au domain please reach out to them.
We suspect that this Gold Rush will last for some time and we are likely to see 700,000 .au domain names being registered by the end of October.
.au Gold Rush – How valuable are .au domains
