AusRegistry and the .au Domain Administration (auDA) has launched an online survey aimed at the broader Australian community, asking their opinions about the .au domain namespace.

The survey is the first of its kind in the .au namespace and is seeking 10,000 responses over three months to provide a baseline performance standard to measure against annually in future surveys.

A key element of the survey is an investigation into the domain name purchasing behaviour of Australian consumers. Anecdotal evidence suggests Australians exhibit a strong preference for .au domain names and trust it over other namespaces such as .com, .nz or .asia. The survey will also identify trends in .au domain name uptake using demographic data.

Another area of interest the survey will examine is the introduction of new generic Top-Level Domains later this year and what impact this might have on consumers and .au.

Annual surveys will benchmark .au against the data from this survey and it is hoped the results will provide reliable insights which can be used to dictate future marketing and education campaigns, and importantly help set new policy direction.

This year’s survey will be hosted on both the AusRegistry and auDA websites, as well as the websites of a number of accredited .au registrars who chose to participate. The survey will also be displayed across 500 of the most popular websites in Australia with a potential exposure to 21 million unique browsers per month.

AusRegistry and auDA encourage interested participants to complete the survey.

The survey is being conducted by global market research company Effective Measure and will run until the end of May 2013. A summary of the results is expected to be released later this year.

To go straight to the survey please click here.