The auDA registry, which manages Australia's ccTLD .AU, has summed up an important period for itself. Six days before the end of March last year, the Australian ccTLD allowed the registration of second-level domain names (like example.au; Previously, registrants had to register third level domains such as example.com.au). In just six days of March last year, almost 80,000 second-level domain names were registered in the domain.
However, then registrations dropped noticeably: by the end of the Q2, only 170,000 such domains were registered in the .AU domain zone. But in the future, the they revived again: 550,000 registrations in the Q3 and 716,000 by the end of the Q4. Domain Name Wire, reporting this news, notes that until October last year, the registrants of the corresponding third-level names had the preferential right to register second-level names in the .AU domain. Then, any domain names became available for registration to everyone.
Australia finished the Q1 of this year with 740,000 second-level domain names. The total number of registrations in the domain zone was 4.2 million.
