The .au explosion

Domain names are prime web real estate and for the time being the .au continues to rule the roost, with the 2.18 million .au websites in existence adding $435 million dollars to the Australian economy in 2011 and creating 4300 jobs.

As the infographic provided by Deloitte highlights, we are looking at a .au boom with an explosion in the number of websites registering under the .au banner.

Businesses are clearly big fans of .au  with more than 85 per cent of the .au websites registered as com.au sites, but as Charis Palmer points out in her piece today the boom may not last forever, especially as new options become available to organisations when deciding where to locate their online presence.

It's an intriguing scenario, especially as the cost of registering new brand-based or generic domains begins to come down.

It's hard to look past the popularity of .au but its supremacy in the long term is not guaranteed.