seo web recovery drop above.com parking domain auda

SEO Web Recovery registered 97% of every expired domain name for the last half of 2024.

Last week we wrote how auDA (.au Domain Administration) ruined the trust and security of Australian domain names from 2020-2024.

We showed you that Drop.com.au caught 99.8% of EVERY expired and/or deleted Australian domain name that was dropped and re-purchased during the last six months of 2024, which equated to over 271,797 domain names during the last half of last year.

We will now give you some more facts and figures that will blow your mind and leave you asking, “How are auDA allowing this to continue?”. You may even ask, “Aren’t they supposed to be managing the Australian domain name space for all Australian businesses?”.

Get ready to have your mind blown about what has been happening, and continues to happen, with Australian domain names.

There is ONE single company that Drop.com.au (Owned by Above.com – a domain name PARKING company) has as their BIGGEST DAILY BUYER over the past 6 months (it’s actually YEARS now…).

SEO Web Recovery

Out of the 271,797 expired and deleted domains that Drop scooped up, every day, over the last six months of 2024, guess how many of these domains SEO Web Recovery purchased through their Daily Domain Name Drop Auction platform?

SEO Web Recovery purchased 263,727 of the total 271,797 domain names that Drop caught.

This means that SEO Web Recovery, Drop.com.au‘s BIGGEST VIP CUSTOMER, purchased 97% of them.

Here’s the maths…

Can you even believe this?

Let me simplify this for you.

From the 1st July 2024 until the 31st December 2024, the LAST SIX MONTHS of 2024…. one single company called SEO Web Recovery purchased 97% of EVERY SINGLE expired and/or deleted AUSTRALIAN DOMAIN NAME…

… and Rosemary Sinclair (auDA CEO) sat by and did nothing about this. And has now left auDA.

Does this sound like Australian domain names are secure and can be trusted?

… when ONE SINGLE PRIVATE COMPANY is getting their hands on more than 500,000 domain names per year, exclusively through Drop.com.au (a private company) … does it sound like Australian domain names are secure, or trustworthy, moving forward?

However, there is now a new auDA CEO . . .

Bruce Tonkin is the NEW CEO of auDA, and has just come into this role.

Now that these facts and figures are out there, there are THREE MASSIVE elephant questions in the room….

  1. Who the hell is SEO Web Recovery and what connection, if any, do they have with Drop.com.au and Above.com ?
  2. How much money has SEO Web Recovery paid Drop.com.au (and Above.com) over the past 6 months, for their 263,727 domain name purchases?
  3. Will Bruce Tonkin (new auDA CEO) investigate this and allow this to continue?

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Betty Boomer

seo web recover must have some great software to work so well with drop and above

Helgon

What’s also interesting is the many ultra premium dropping names that never even show up on their drop auctions. Which all magically all get registered to seo Web Recovery. Good question, who is this web recovery company?

Thomas

dont look now rob, but their name says what they do: SEO web recovery

i have no issues with what they do so long as there is no conflict of interest eg a relationship between that company and any registrars of losing registrants

Rudy Labordus

The core issue is that this has been a monopoly for years. No one has a fair chance to buy a valuable domain from the drops. Even if a legitimate buyer were willing to bid $1,000,000 in a competitive auction, Drop (SEO web recovery?) could just outbid them at $1,100,000, knowing they never actually have to pay—because they’re effectively paying themselves. This allows them to acquire domains for free or artificially drive up bids to collect cash bonuses. And if they accidentally bid too high? It doesn’t matter—they never have to honour their bid anyway.

Rudy Labordus

Here is just some interesting info for anyone wanting to do some deeper research:

Drop.com.au: Acquired by Trellian in February 2017
Netfleet.com.au: Acquired by Trellian a few years later.

Trellian was an Australian company founded in 1997 by Ren Warmuz (passed away in 2013). The company was then taken over by his brother David Warmuz who is now the CEO.  

Trellian rebranded in 2023 to Trillion.com Pty Ltd (ABN) 55 098 223 048

Last month (Dec 2024), David Warmuz also became CEO of help.com.au which trillion acquired in 2023.

SEO Web Recovery Pty Ltd was registered in Victoria on June 8, 2021 (ABN) 96 650 850 150. The registered address is 45 Bridge Rd, Richmond VIC 3121, and before August 2023, it was level 8, 227 Collins St, Melbourne, but it has always had a mailing address of PO Box 19, Flinders Lane, Melbourne. VIC 8009. The director is listed as 62-year-old Glenn William Fawcett (Wurdiboluc VIC). However, the previous owner was listed as Third Exhib Pty Ltd ACN 120 521 315 Richmond VIC. Maybe those names and addresses will help someone connect some dots.

Enjoy.

Last edited 15 days ago by Robert
Rudy Labordus

Correction: Not the previous owner – the “current” owner of SEO Web Recovery Pty Ltd is listed as Third Exhib Pty Ltd, and the director of SEO Web Recovery Pty Ltd is listed as Glenn William Fawcett. I didn’t bother doing an extract on Third Exhib Pty Ltd to see who owns that, but when you have companies hiding behind companies, it really does make a great start for a good conspiracy, don’t you think? 🙂 Feel free to dig deeper if you want to. There’s plenty of publicly available information if you do.

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