The local domain name registration industry contributed $475 million to the Australian economy in the 2011 financial year, with more than 60,000 new .au domains being added every month, a new report into the industry has found.
The report, compiled by Deloitte Access Economics, has found Australia is in the middle of a boom, with more than 2.18 million domains registered in August 2011 – representing substantial exponential growth since 2005.
More than $275 million in wages were paid out during the 2011 year to 4,326 employees, which the reports says indicates an “overall relatively labour-intensive industry”.
“The amount of money is surprising,” auDA chief executive Chris Disspain told SmartCompany. “We’ve got exponential growth in this space, and if you look around the world, there are very few organisations that are experiencing this type of growth in our field.”
The growth in domains has been staggering. In December 2002 only 6,552 new domain names were registered, but that number has reached 60,000 per month now. Although short-term volatility has obstructed that growth lately, it has continued for years.
Eight percent of registered .au domains were registered in major cities, while just 1.8% of domains were registered in remote or very remote parts of Australia, compared to just 2.5% of the population.
However, there is one surprising result – the ratio of businesses to .au domain name registrations is actually higher in remote Australia, reflecting the “overall lower access to quality interest services in these regions”.
Arts and recreation services were found to have the highest proportion of businesses with a web presence, followed by information media and telcos, wholesale trade, finance and insurance, manufacturing, professional and technical services, real estate and mining.
Transport, postal and warehousing were the sectors with the lowest proportion of businesses with a web presence.
The domain industry was actually found to contribute to sales activity for businesses, with the report identifying that some consumers have a strong preference for buying Australian, with the .au domain providing confirmation of an Australian business.
However, the head of the .au Domain Administration has said there will be some changes coming over the next few years that could change the way the industry operates, including the introduction of generic top level domains.
“We’ve got 60,000 new domains a month. I don’t think that sort of growth can continue, I think you’ll reach a plateau. It would be extraordinary to see that level of growth continuing.”
The introduction of generic domains, such as “.Qantas” or “.Apple”, will also have an impact, he says.
“If brands become more well known, and the public starts to get used to using those, we may be looking at a policy where we could allow brand.au domains. That’s one possibility, perhaps.”
“The introduction of those domains will have an effect. Whether it’s manifested in growth numbers, which I think is unlikely, or in other ways, we’ll see changes.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
