The ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) says there are 860,000 small businesses with Internet access, from a total of 2.3 million businesses with gross revenues less than $2 million AUD. Less than 10% of those small businesses have websites, and far fewer have monetized their websites.
At first glance, that would seem to be a tremendous opportunity for web designers and search engine marketing - the ground floor of a market.
The ABS figures seem to be based on registrations of Australian TLDs: '.com.au' and '.net.au'.
According to Webhosting Info, the registration of international TLDs - .com, .net, .org, .info, and .biz - is already declining dramatically.
Rank  |
TLD | Total Domains | Market Share | Net Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | COM | 1,265,472 | 86.2713 % | (2,116) |
| 2 | NET | 92,295 | 6.292 % | (111) |
| 3 | ORG | 54,563 | 3.7197 % | (549) |
| 4 | INFO | 35,171 | 2.3977 % | (249) |
| 5 | BIZ | 19,310 | 1.3164 % | (357) |
I have to admit that these figures coupled with the amendments to Copyright Law and the Cooper case, are disheartening. Considering the debate over amendments to Copyright Law in Australia has continued over the last year, it seems the new laws are already having damaging effects. Although the 59,914 domains in New Zealand is much smaller, at least the numbers are increasing.
It looks like I am just a little behind the times. The optimistic perspective that drove me to study and plan to add SEO-SEM to my skillset is better reflected by industry posts from 2004-2005. The Internet community is nothing if not responsive.
This is globalization in reverse for Australia.
Comments