RSS.au Registry Reports - April 2020 Now Available
auDA publishes monthly reports looking at registry performance and domain name registration trends in the .au namespace.
You can download them here: Registry Reports
These registry reports provide a snapshot of activity in the domain name system and include measures of technical performance - for example, the average response time for a DNS query – and the numbers of domain names being registered overall, and in each namespace – com.au, asn.au etc.
As a broad average we expect around 40,000 new .au domain names to be created in a month, although this does vary seasonally.
April 2020 saw 48,754 names created - the biggest month for new domain name creations we’ve seen in a while, however the total number of .au domains actually fell slightly compared to where it was at the same time last year.
While growth in domain name registrations globally is slowing, the April decline in total number of .au names is largely due to a lower renewal rate for names that were registered in March/April last year during promotions from registrars.
How long people choose to register or renew their .au domain names for – the licence term - is also changing.
One-year licences are now the most popular licence term for names being created or renewed.
Since variable licence periods of between 1 and 5 years were introduced in 2018, we’ve seen a gradual shift away from the once standard 2-year licence term.
The popularity of 1-year licences has been steadily growing as more registrars have made the variable .au licence periods available to registrants. March 2020 was the first month the number of one-year licences exceeded the number of 2-year licences and April 2020 saw the trend continue.
Our Registry Reports with the previous calendar month’s data are generally published early in the month and the April 2020 report is available now.