In early 2022, auDA released Direct “.au” domain names for “Priority Allocation” to existing domain name holders.
At the time, auDA stated:
“The .au direct Priority Allocation Period ran from 24 March 2022 to 20 September 2022 and provided registrants who held a .au domain name registered before the launch of .au direct on 24 March 2022, priority to apply for the .au direct match of their existing domain name. For example, the existing registrant of getyour.com.au had the opportunity to register getyour.au through the Priority Allocation Process, if they wished to do so.”
In late September and early October 2022, anyone who didn’t have priority allocation to a Direct “.au” and found that the domain was still available, could register it.
Now, it’s 12 months later (plus 30 days grace period) and the tap has been turned on for all the Direct “.au” domains that no one wants to be discarded to “the drops”.
And drop they are, as thousands and thousands of Direct “.au” domains are being released and discarded by the original Registrants every day this week.
We will have more information about this very subject toward the end of this month, but by all accounts, many people seem to be deciding that Direct “.au” domains don’t look to be worth the “double spend” as they discard them.
You can watch the tap spray out all the discarded Direct “.au” domain names every day this week by using Backorder or DropCatcher.com.au(.) On DropCatcher, you can also search only by Direct “.au” and order them starting from the shortest domains.
Yep, .au is a complete dud, .com.au is King and .net.au is strong and steady too.
Now the auDA Directors are asking the members to give them a 20% pay rise because they are so busy. Vote NO
[Edited post]
I see there is nonsense valuations of $55,000 or even $10,000 on .au names belonging to this junk extension.
Becoming harder and harder to locate good .com.au or even good .net.au names on the drops with all these junk names.
Hi Adrian, you can see ONLY “.com.au” domains if you use the filter at DropCatcher.com.au 🙂
Does anyone know of any real life use cases where a company has switched, or started using a Direct “.au” domain name?
Does anyone know of a single one that has sold for decent money?
The highest profile one I know of is CSIRO, they use csiro.au as their primary domain.
CSIRO.au were issued their Direct .au from the very beginning Joel. They’ve had it for 20-odd years.
Biz.au is one that comes to mind.
Nice to hear from you Tom!! Haha, yes I am trialling this Direct AU to see if Google likes them yet. You’ll notice the biz.com.au points to it also. I’m also trialling to see if the public like “register.biz.au” as an address to register new Australian business names. It takes months to trial all this stuff. I don’t really see anyone else trying Direct AU as their main business yet? Keen to hear any other examples.
I’m frankly shocked gentlemen that nobody has mentioned an absolute pillar of IT excellence that is; melbourneit.au
Wow, now we know… any more?
Haven’t heard of any sales, but I have seen a couple in use. There is a local real estate agent whose brochure came around a while ago with a Direct .au on it. You’re going to be annoyed because I can’t remember the name (I wasn’t in the market for property) but I certainly took note that he was using a .au. From memory, it was a 3L, which would explain why.
Here they are. It was a 4L – mmco.au. The .com.au is in use by someone else.
Anyone notice the TV ads for View.com.au lately? I chatted with the owner of that name back in the day, he was firm wanted $200k. Must’ve got something good as he sold it a few years later.