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findtim

Top Contributor
tim cutts: "but I don't expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn't bet on that happening in the long-term either."
to put it another way: if you get and use a .au you will have to do ALL your SEO from scratch all over again, years and years of work down the drain.
tim
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
.net.au 292,743
.com.au 2,660,185

auDA annual report 2015/2016 registration statistics

Why have another .au extension? It looks like 90% of the equivalent registered .com.au are still available today for hand registration!

Where is the demand or need? There is none!
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor

"Google: New Top Level Domains (TLD) Will Not Help Rankings



Yesterday Google's Matt Cutts went out of his way to debunk a story in Marketing Magazine named New top-level domains to trump .com in Google search results.

Adrian Kinderis CEO of ARI Registry Services made the claim as follows:

Will a new TLD web address automatically be favoured by Google over a .com equivalent? Quite simply, yes it will.

Wow! How can people spread such misinformation (I better be careful, I am sure I said things that weren't true as well). But seriously, this?


I am glad Matt Cutts called him out. Matt wrote:


Sorry, but that's just not true, and as an engineer in the search quality team at Google, I feel the need to debunk this misconception.


Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don't expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn't bet on that happening in the long-term either. If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that's your choice, but you shouldn't register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you'll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.

I hate when I hear people talk about proven SEO methods that they read from some marketing magazine, blog or even places like NY Times and claim it to be true because it was written. Something like this hurts the industry.

One thing, this is a great way for someone to lose his reputation as being an expert in anything. You said something so concret as fact and then a Google representative who knows the algorithm says you are absolutely wrong - well, that has to hurt your reputation.

What makes it worse is that he claims to have been "researching this topic" for about 6 years. Amazing."
 

Jimboot

Top Contributor
tim cutts: "but I don't expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn't bet on that happening in the long-term either."
to put it another way: if you get and use a .au you will have to do ALL your SEO from scratch all over again, years and years of work down the drain.
tim
Depends how you do it. You can preserve it but to do it properly you'd be looking at 25 - 50 hour work. At the end of which you would not have lost any traffic... but you would not have gained any either and you just paid out for 50 hours work.
 

Jimboot

Top Contributor

DomainNames

Top Contributor
I think we have 4 auDA Board Candidates all confirmed they are firmly against the proposed extra .au extension and will fight for it to be stopped.
  • Shane Moore
  • Jim Stewart
  • Nicole Murdoch
  • Tim Connell
It is not clear where other candidates or existing board members now stand or what they will do on this issue. No one from "supply" of course seems to be against it....and some existing board members do not appear to be wanting to review it and stop it? At least they have not stated this here or anywhere I can see but I hope they do "come out" asap.

"The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept" Lieutenant General David Lindsay Morrison AO
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
You are welcome.
Hi Nicole and welcome to Dntrade!
Can you confirm you are against another competing additional .au extension and you will fight to stop it?

It seems you may also feel it was largely "rigged" and not done with proper process.

I applaud you and all those are are now actively publicly speaking out.. especially those who had some involvement in the flawed panel, survey and decision process and know more than most are stating what has occurred is wrong and needs to be stopped.
 

Nicole Murdoch

Regular Member
Yes. Definitely against it and will do what I can to stop it. "rigged" is a strong word. Lets go with... I would have done it differently... and with completely different processes....
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
Yes. Definitely against it and will do what I can to stop it. "rigged" is a strong word. Lets go with... I would have done it differently... and with completely different processes....

Sending out "Yes only vote" survey solicitations seemed to be what I would call "rigged" but I understand you're a lawyer who may not use such as term :). auDA did acknowledge something happened but they did not name them publicly.
 

Nicole Murdoch

Regular Member
My concerns with the process weren't just the communication. They go deeper than that.
I don't want to criticise auDA. That is not my intention. My purpose is to determine what can be done about all of this and then set about doing it (if I am elected of course).
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
Wise words against another additional competing .au extension
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/Direct2LDs-2015-No2.html

Jo Lim
Chief Operations and Policy Officer
auDA
jo.lim@auda.org.au

Dear Jo

Re: Submission re the Names Policy Panel's Report
The Submission below is in response to the Names Policy Panel's Draft Recommendations of August 2015.

Would you please confirm to me that this document will be actually read by yourself and the Names Policy Panel.

My reason for making this request is that there is no mention whatsoever, in either of the last two documents issued by the Panel, of the points that I've made in my succession of submissions.

The credibility of auDA as a multi-stakeholder organisation is being seriously undermined by the bull-headed manner in which this campaign for a further revenue-bonanza is being conducted.

Thank you for your consideration.

Roger Clarke

Submission re Direct Registration in .au
Introduction

I have submitted to the Panel on this matter twice before:

The primary points that I made were that:
  1. Opening up .au "would create an enormous amount of additional contention over short names and acronyms", and hence:
  2. Registrants would "need to have imposed on them a contractual obligation to implement a suitably-formatted preliminary 'disambiguation page'".
Neither point was reflected in the Issues Paper of April 2015.
Neither point has been reflected in the Draft Recommendations document.

The Spurious Claim of Benefits to Individuals
The Panel suggests that "the biggest benefit will be for individuals, who would be able to obtain an Australian domain name in a simple and straightforward way" (p.1. See also p.6). This appears to me to be at the very least misleading, and at worse fatuous or false.

One consideration is that it is unclear to what extent any given individual can demonstrate the "close and substantial connection" necessary to gain a <personalname>.com.au domain-name, and hence a <personalname>.au domain-name.

Similarly, the suggestion that "it would mean [individuals] could register a name they had missed out on in com.au" completely misses the point that contention in the .au TLD space would be at least as great as, but potentially even greater than that in .com and other 2LDs.

Leaving aside corporate names that comprise or mirror the form of personal names (topical example: Ashley Madison), many names are shared by multiple individuals. For example, LinkedIn shows 15 people in Australia who go by the name 'Roger Clarke'. One of us already has rogerclarke.com.au (and rogerclarke.com). A sculptor from Bath UK has rogerclarke.net. There has been no apparent interest in rogerclarke.id.au, but there would be contention for a domain-name as prominent as rogerclarke.au. And note that 'Clarke' is not one of the top-ten surnames, and 'Roger' is a moderately unusual given name.

Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the benefits of enabling some people to acquire <personalname>.au would flow primarily to the organisations in the feeding-chain.

I further note that strong arguments have been made by advocates for the demand-side against direct registrations within the TLD, including by ACCAN and by John Selby of Macquarie University.

The Management of Conflicting Applications
Another complete failure in the Panel's work is evident in the discussion of "a first right of refusal on the matching name" (p.9).

There are many instances of duplicate names in multiple 2LDs. My 2007 Submission used acs.au as an example.

The naive statement that "the Panel does not agree that com.au should be given preference, and believes that all 2LDs should be regarded as equal" is either utterly naive or blatantly disingenuous.

If you want to allocate a contested domain-name, there has to be a set of rules that determines the winner. An 'equal right' could only be achieved through dual/multiple allocation, or a 'Mexican stand-off' (i.e. no allocation at all).

My submission is that:

  • no-one wins is best, i.e. do not open up .au to direct registrations;
  • everyone wins is second-best, i.e. impose a disambiguation mechanism on whichever entity wins the name; and
  • winner-takes-all is the absolute-worst.
The All-Too-Apparent Dominance of Supply-Side Interests
The tone throughout the Panel's document is excusatory. Expressions such as "The fact that change may be driven from the supply side does not mean that the change will not also be beneficial to people on the demand side of the industry" (p.7) make abundantly clear that the proposition is motivated by the bonanza it promises for players within the industry, particularly registrars and lawyers, but also auDA itself.

This impression is reinforced by the failure to address the '.au domain monetisation' issue (p.9). Given this strong bias towards profiteering, it is very difficult to interpret the 'first right of refusal' and 'equal right' text any other way than as leading to an auction, with the best-resourced contender winning the right, and lawyers and auDA sharing in the cash flow.

Another indicator arises from the fundamental clash between "perhaps the highest level of demand for direct registrations will come from individuals" (p.9) and "It has been suggested that a 'premium' pricing model could help to distinguish and differentiate .au names from 2LD names" (p.10). The racketeering overtones evident in the Panel's report makes entirely clear how that tension would be resolved.

Conclusion
Regrettably, the secondary point that I made in a previous Submission is all too relevant:

"Opening up .au ... would, in many people's eyes, significantly reduce auDA's well-deserved reputation [because it will now be perceived as] a money-grubbing monopolist, as ICANN is".
Author Affiliations
Roger Clarke is Principal of Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra. He is also a Visiting Professor in Cyberspace Law & Policy at the University of N.S.W., and a Visiting Professor in the Computer Science at the Australian National University.

He was also a Director of the Internet Society of Australia 2010-15, and Secretary 2012-15.
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
BIG NEWS

1. At the auDA AGM today Cameron Boardman stated the proposed additional .au extension can be stopped if the new auDA board votes against it.

2. Registry will have to go to tender.

Perhaps people may want to email auDA to make sure this is on the official public minutes.

For all candidates who had the courage to stand up well done but now is the time for you to really get busy and back up your objections to the proposed additional .au with action.

  • 100% a complete review needs to occur.
  • ALL 3 million existing registrants deserve proper information and multiple surveys. They MUST be contacted by auDA via email multiple times not just a handful of people surveys again. auDA surveyed 3000 out of 3 million which is is 0.1%. so 99.9% of existing registrants probably do not even know about it
  • "Yes vote rigging" must be stopped this time especially when it comes to any possible conflicts of interest auDA Supply Board, members and related entities.
  • The failure of the direct .uk and .nz must be taken into consideration now their 2015 / 2016 reports are public. The statics cannot be ignored or glossed over. auDA Must not make the same mistakes they did. and the UK independent report clearly states not enough end user engagement or existing registrant feedback was taken into consideration at all.
 

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