State of the .au Domain Industry

22 10 2014

Did you know that there are almost 3 million .au domain names currently registered?

These statistics are among those released in the “Behind the Dot, The State of the .au Domain” report issued by AusRegistry on Monday.

The report is the first edition of a new quarterly series aimed at providing insights into the performance of the .au domain namespace and current .au domain statistics.

The report announced a near 6 per cent growth in the number of registered .au domains in the past 12 months. While short of the 30+ per cent annual growth reported in 2006, this figure follows steadily from the previous two quarters; indicating that the growth rate has now stabilised.

The report found that 43 per cent of all registered .au domains were less than 2 years old, with the first term renewal rate at just over 50 per cent. The report points to impulse purchases, failed businesses, speculation and unused domains as the leading factors contributing to the lower renewal rate. This was compared to domain names that were at least 6 years old which had over an 80 per cent chance of renewal.  Only 7 per cent of names were found to be more than 10 years old, with a further 2 per cent found to be over 14 years old, reflecting the exponential growth of the previous decade.

New South Wales was reported as holding the most .au domains at just under 1 million, followed by Victoria and Queensland. These figures broadly reflect the population size of each state which explains the lower numbers in Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

The report also discussed character length in domain names, revealing that almost half of all registered domain names are between 9 and 15 characters long. Only 4 domain names were recorded as being the maximum length allowable at 63 characters. 

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