Australian commercial domain registrations pass 500,000
Tue, Feb 15 2005
An interesting little factoid I recently came across is that the number of domains registered in the ".com.au" space has now passed 500,000.
That's a pretty large number in itself but what makes it particularly significant is that the policy for assignment of .com.au domains makes it hard for random people to register them for the wrong reasons. The policy is specifically formulated to keep the .com.au namespace purely for the use of Australian businesses, preventing overseas businesses and individuals registering domains for speculative or blackmail purposes. To register a .com.au domain a number of criteria must be met, such as providing an ABN to prove that the applicant is an Australian business, demonstrating that the domain is derived from the company or trading name, and if multiple domains are registered to one company there needs to be justification for each one of them.
As a result the Australian commercial domain space has remained pretty clean compared to many overseas equivalents, and the number of registered .com.au domains should actually correlate fairly accurately to the number of businesses with an online presence.
This makes the 500,000 number pretty significant in a country with a population of only 20 million, equating to one commercial domain for every 40 people and proving that even small Australian businesses have embraced the Internet in a big way.