Happy September everybody, Spring has sprung!
If you were to guess who the Top 20 Domain Investors were over the past 3 months (June, July, August 2024), which Company Names would you think of?
First, let me give you some factual data.
The Top 20 Domain Investors for the past 3 months purchased a whopping 62496 dropping domains.
Of those, one single company called “SEO Web Recovery” purchased 96.3% of ALL the expired domains over the past 90 days. They exclusively purchased them through the monopoly “Drop.com.au” drop catcher, and exclusively parked them using the “Above.com” domain monetisation service, that the owners of “Drop.com.au” own themselves.
Well, in true domain name industry transparent style, here at Assets, we now present to you the Top 20 list of Domain Investors who purchased expired domains over June, July and August 2024:
Who the heck is this company *seo web recovery*
As usual AUDA chooses to deliberately look the other way….They could not care less as long as they still get paid and get to go on their frequent business class JUNKETS paid for from domain name consumer compulsory high auda registration fees.
SEO Web Recovery (based on your other articles) taste a lot of these domains, blocking original owners and new businesses from acquiring them for a period of time, before somehow arranging with DROP to get their money back for a lot of them? Nutz.
auDA looks the other way because without the massive amount of domains purchased by SEO Web Recovery the au namespace would be in decline.
Since June 2023 the au namespace has only grown by 0.3% which is about 25,000 domains per year.
Meanwhile auDA spending is increasing and the board gave itself a 10% pay rise.
Now domain name prices have gone up to pay for auDA staff bonuses and multiple committee meeting.
Australian domain owners are paying the price.
Seemingly, all the domains SEO Web Recovery purchase from each Drop auction are released again 7 days following each auction ending. Perhaps something auDA and Drop have arranged behind closed doors together to allow these fall back into the open market and to minimise reseller attention. A need perhaps to quell outside concern by any small act of principles.
Different people are drawing their own conclusions as to the relationship between “SEO Web Recovery” and “Drop.com.au”…. but I assume and would hope auDA don’t actively participate in, or endorse this gross display of domain tasting… That being said, they clearly know about it, as I see a number of auDA employees “looking” at my Linked In profile from time to time, when these articles are posted. They’ve known about it for many months now. Why aren’t they doing anything about it?
The Registry (Identity Digital) only refunds the wholesale price of the domain so either SEO Web Recovery are happy to make a loss or they have an amazing deal going on with Drop.com.au.
The Cooling Off Peiod is only 3 days and the registrant has to give written notice to cancel.
Not sure what happens with the ATO from a tax and accounting point of view as it appears the ABN is not even registered for GST.
Always appreciate your insights Nobby.
SEO Web Recovery and Drop.com.au are now doubling down on their domain tasting strategy by registering every single domain that is dropped each day, effectively making use of the loophole in the cooling off period regulated by auDA.
While the cooling off period is a legitimate practice and within the licensing rules, being there to protect the average user who makes an error in registering a domain, you would have to question this blatant commercial use which is generally frowned upon by the industry.
What is surprising is that these cancelled domains miraculously avoid the normal drop cycle for au domains. The names are cancelled after several days and immediately get removed from the registry giving the impression that it did not happen. “Nothing to see here people”, “Business as usual”
Certainly the registrations will appear in auDA’s monthly reports as new registrations, giving the impression of a healthy namespace but in which public report do all of the cancellations appear? Where is the transparency auDA?
I hope auDA is enjoying the paperwork in issuing multiple domain licences daily and cancelling them 3 days later.
auDA is due for another Government Review this year so keep an eye out for it and make your views known when this arises.
Amazing….
Trellian really is a magic venture.
No mud seems to stick to them.