Registry auDA, which manages Australia’s ccTLD .AU, has published its Q3 report. According to the report, there were 3,386,186 domains registered in the zone as of September 30, which means there was a significant growth spurt compared with the previous quarter, of 5 percent. The number of new registrations in July-September is also impressive: 171,846, which is 22 percent more than in the second quarter.
Like many other country-code domains, this success is driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, or by quarantine restrictions to be exact. According to Domain Incite, Australia has had a relatively low coronavirus incidence, but mostly due to strict and resolute restriction measure taken by the government. In the spring of this year, Australia lifted many restrictions, but then the delta variant of COVID-19 started spreading across the country in June. The authorities immediately introduced harsh lockdowns in most major cities, which evidently resulted in a spike in registrations. In July alone, over 60,500 new domain names were registered in .AU, which is the second largest result in its history.
