Methodology

How the namespace is measured.

Every edition is built the same way: a complete monthly sweep of the registered .au universe, enriched with DNS, diffed over time, and published in aggregate. The July 2026 edition covers 3,798,553 names.

  1. 01

    Refresh the universe

    Each cycle starts from the latest authoritative .au zone, giving a current baseline of every delegated name plus the registered-but-undelegated ones a plain zone can't show.

  2. 02

    Sweep the registry (RDAP)

    Every registered name is re-checked against the .au RDAP service — registrar, registrant class, status flags, and DNSSEC — producing a complete, registry-authoritative snapshot for the month.

  3. 03

    Enrich with DNS

    A recursive-DNS sweep resolves A / AAAA / MX / NS and reads SPF and DMARC records, then maps hosting, mail, and DNS operators by ASN and nameserver patterns.

  4. 04

    Diff & publish

    Each snapshot is diffed against the previous one to separate genuine change from coverage, and the aggregate result is published as that month's report.

Reading the numbers

What the figures mean

Stock, not flow. Counts are domains under management at the snapshot date — a census, not a tally of registrations during the month.
Coverage vs growth. Month-over-month change reflects our dataset coverage first. We separate that from organic zone movement in each report.
Registry-authoritative. The registry layer comes from RDAP, the .au registry's own record — not from scraping third-party WHOIS mirrors.
Heuristic infrastructure. Hosting / mail / DNS operator shares are inferred from ASN and record patterns, so treat them as indicative.
FAQ

Common questions

Is this an auDA publication?

No. Watchtower is independent. auDA publishes how many .au domains exist; we measure what they are. Our figures come from our own registry and DNS sweeps and are not endorsed by auDA.

Why do the totals differ from auDA's?

Counts are stock at our snapshot date and depend on how complete our captured universe was that month. A month-over-month rise can reflect improved coverage — a refreshed zone surfacing pre-existing names — rather than organic zone growth. Each report calls this out.

How accurate are the provider labels?

Hosting, email, and DNS operators are inferred heuristically from ASN, MX, and nameserver patterns. They are reliable at the level of broad market share but should be read as indicative, not exact — platforms that front through shared CDNs are undercounted.

Do you publish anything about individual registrants?

No. Every figure on this site is an aggregate. We do not publish, sell, or expose registrant personal information — the reports operate strictly at the level of namespace-wide statistics.