October 11, 2019
The latest registry reports from auDA covering September 2019 shows the .au namespace remains solid.
During September, 42,196 .au domain names were registered, representing year-on-year growth of 2.5%. At the end of the month there were a total of 3,196,279 AU names under management, up 1.1% on September last year.
Registrations by namespace as at September 30 and year-over-year growth (or otherwise):
The trusted .com.au extension continues to make up around 89% of all .au registrations.
While .com.au is bubbling along, the .net.au namespace has shrunk quite dramatically these past few years. In September 2016, there were 287,335 .net.au registrations; so last month's figure represents a drop of 21% in three years. It looks like the extension reached its zenith back in September 2014 when 323,274 .net.au names were registered.
The latest auDA registry reports can be found here.
Given recent growth rates, it will be quite some time before .au reaches the 4 million mark as the namespace has matured. While .au has been around for more than three decades, the one million mark wasn't reached until 2007. There was then a significant growth spurt, with the 2 million Australian domain names barrier broken in 2011 - a four year wait.
The 3 million milestone was reached in July 2015 (another 4 years); so it's taken more than 4 years since to add less than 200,000. There is an uptick expected with the launch of direct .au registrations (e.g. example.au). Once that option is available, it will be interesting to see how many takers there are and how that affects AU's growth rate.
It was expected direct registration under .au was to be made available in the final quarter of this year; however, in late August auDA announced it would be delayed and it envisions availability in the first half of 2020.
Trivia - there are currently 38 registrars compliant with the auDA Information Security Standard (ISS) and 4 auDA accredited registrars yet to complete ISS Certification.
Related - learn about the difference between an accredited registrar and reseller.
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