According to a new report from Deloitte Access Economics, Australian domain names (using ‘.au’) contributed $474.7 million to the economy last financial year.

Deloitte’s investigation found that 60,000 new domain names are being registered each month, compared to just 6,552 back in December 2002. Back in August of 2011, there were just 2.18 million domain names registered in Australia. The sector now employs 4,330 people in full-time work, and pays out $275.7 million each year in wages.

The majority of domain names were registered by companies, with 53% of all registrations, followed by personal websites (in the ‘other’ category) with 18%, sole traders with 14%, registered businesses with 11%, partnerships with 2% and non-profits with 1%. The industry with the weakest web presence was agriculture, forestry and fishing, with only 11% of businesses in that sector having a domain. Transport, postal and warehousing also posted a poor result with 22%.

Large corporations were more likely to have a website, according to the report, with 90% of companies with over 200 employees having a presence on the internet. This was followed by businesses of between 20 and 199 employees, with 71% having registered a domain. Smaller businesses posted worse results, with 51% of those with 5-19 employees having a website and just 29% of businesses with 0-4 employees having registered a name.