Direct .au registration numbers have surpassed 200,000 domain name registrations.
The registration trends are currently at 22,000 new registrations of .au domain names per month. We anticipate the numbers to surge mid September right before the priority allocation cut off date.
The direct registration forecast article we had anticipated 250,000 by end of the year, but at this trend we might be closer to 300,000 direct registration domains.
From the most current auDA reports over one third of all new domain registrations are now direct .au domain names, and there is also a decent percent that re brand new .au without a corresponding .com.au or other extension. A great sign for the sustainability of the new .au tld which has originally received a lot of bad press from the industry. We were not big fans of .au but understood the need and the gap that these domains would serve as not everyone had an ABN ready to go when they were ready to register a website address.
Personally we would have preferred for the current policies to be changed instead and free up the .com.au zone to allow registrations by Australian citizens without out the need for an ACN/ABN as we do not see the size of the AU market big enough and mature enough to have both com.au and .au which will create end user confusion. But here we are and the numbers are showing otherwise.
At the end of July there were 217,805 .net.au domains registered…
This means that by the end of August there will be more .au domains registered.
Unfortunately .net.au domains are likely to continue to drop even more, where considering that at one stage there were 322,687 .net.au registered domains a 33% drop and every month there is a steady decline.
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