As of Thursday, March 24 2022, businesses will be able to register a domain simply ending in ‘.au’ – that’s right, without the .com!

I already have a .com.au domain, why should I register a .au domain?

It’s all about your brand and making it easier to connect to your customers.

First, a .au domain is shorter than having to type .com.au which makes it ideal for customers to easily get to your website. It also makes it easier to recite your web address in person and over the phone and takes up less space on a business card or other marketing promotions, social media posts, etc.

The move to.au domains is intended to bring Australia in line with other countries such as Indonesia, Canada, the UK and the US, which already offer similar .id, .ca, .uk and .us domains. The .au domain is a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) specific to Australia. Find out more here.

Using a .au domain can be seen as your authenticity mark. Only businesses who meet the Australian Domain Name Authority’s (auDA) criteria can register for one.

If your market is primarily in Australia, having an .au domain makes you stand out as being Australian based. It also helps search engines such as Google recognise the location of your Australian business which can help with improving your search rankings.

If you already have a .com.au domain, we suggest you register your new .au domain with the same domain registration provider. This way both domains are managed under the one account. To get it up and running on your website, you may need to contact your web developer or hosting provider. You can decide to either redirect the .au to your current .com.au domain or make the .au your main domain and redirect the .com.au to it.

For more information on how to launch your .au domain click here.

You only have a limited time, as the registered owner of .com.au and .net.au domains, you have preferred status to register the corresponding .au domains, take care of this now to avoid having to fight to maintain your brand’s online integrity.