As its coming close to September 20th, 2022, you as a business owner may be finding more and more people are emailing you about purchasing your .au domain. These emails can come off as being sort of spammy or in some cases these emails have been known to make business owners feel confused. Well, We Fix IT are here to help! Let us explain what a .au domain is, why you should get one if you want to and how it can be helpful to you as a business owner. Of course, you can purchase both any domain and a .au domain from We Fix IT (if it is available for purchase that is). Call us today on 08 8911 1278 and we can talk you through the quick process of how to purchase a domain with us and how much it would cost.
So, to understand what a .au domain is the first step would be to understand what a website domain is. A website domain is the unique address of a website. It is the part of a web address that comes after the “www” and before the first slash. For example, wefixit.com.au is a domain that houses the files of the website www.wefixit.com.au/. A domain does not have to be .au there are many other suffixes that can follow the website name in the URL that have different meanings related to the domain. See the table below for an example.
In Australia, the website domain “.au” is the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD). Any website with a “.au” domain is considered an Australian website. In the past most websites would in Australia would have used .com.au, .net.au or .org.au however as of 2022 .au direct domains are now available for purchase. .au direct names are general purpose – they’re open to anyone with a verified connection to Australia who wants to create or manage an online presence for themselves or their organisation. If you hold a domain name in any other .au namespace (eg. com.au, org.au, id.au etc.), created prior to 24 March 2022, you can apply for Priority Status to register its exact match in .au direct during the six-month period from launch. For example, as we have registered wefixit.com.au we have priority and can now register wefixit.au before the domain name is on the market for anyone else to grab.
Why should you register yourself or your business a .au domain?
- To Preserve Your Online Brand – If you already operate a website, you might consider holding the corresponding dot au domain to prevent competitor(s) from undermining your online presence.
- To Access a domain that is not otherwise available – You might want to secure a domain but it isn’t available in one of the other Australian domain types.
- Because It’s easier to type – An argument that some domain registrars are trying to make is that the dot au domain is easier to type because its shorter. I don’t subscribe to this view. It sounds like to thin sales argument that to generate more sales for domain registrars.
- To Redirect to your current site – If you suspect that prospective visitors might try to reach your website by typing the dot au version of your domain, then you could redirect the dot au domain to your current site.
