Vote YES to opening .au to direct registrations

Written on 03 September, 2015 by Cameron Van Ryn
Categories Domains Tags domain names

.com.au & .net.au domains are probably very familiar to you.

How about just .au domains?

If you’ve never heard of those, that’s because to date .au has never been open to the public for registration, despite being the only country code domain name in the top 20 not to do so. However, recently the auDA (auda.org.au) panel has opened the discussion surrounding the release of direct .au registrations, which would, for example, allow someone to register companyname.au instead of companyname.com.au.

Why would you want this to happen?

These days, businesses and consumers want everything to be simple & easy. It doesn’t make sense to still be using .com.au and .net.au when we could be using the much shorter and simpler .au.

Trends around the world support the theory behind this change. Over the last 12 months, the New Zealand Registry Services (NZRS) and Nominet (the UK registry) successfully opened up direct registrations for .nz & .uk. As of the end of July 2015 Nominet had seen a total of 382,648 .uk domains registered, while NZRS saw a total of 94,823 .nz domains registered at the end of June 2015. These numbers are continuing to increase, and while each name space is different, these statistics support there being both a need and want for the shorter domain.

In alignment with increasing consumer desire for shorter, more memorable domain names, in 2013 new generic top-level domains were released like .estate, .info, etc. These are putting strong pressure on the .au space to respond to the trend of simplified domains. While an .au domain is key to the identity of many Australian online businesses, the industry is changing and evolving, and the Australian space can’t be left behind.

Allowing businesses to register .au domains gives them the option of a shorter domain name without having to compromise on the visibility and trust afforded to them with an .au address, and is a strong selling point against the generic top-level domains.

When it comes down to it, Aussie businesses like yours are the ones who would benefit the most from this. One can only imagine that it would be much easier for a customer to correctly remember a website’s address if it was simply .au instead of either .com.au or .net.au, or any of the variations.

So if you want the option of a simpler domain in .au, now is the time to voice your opinion by heading over to:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WKZZLPV

We strongly encourage everyone to vote to support the change. Australia is behind the rest of the world in many things, but let’s push for this change!

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