Businesses are starting to wake up and notice the problem with “.com.au” domains.
I went to the public forum the .au Domain Administration (auDA) held for the policy review panel which includes registering direct “.au” domains. I can definitely confirm for you this is simply a grab for cash. I don’t advise anyone to register a “.com.au” domain for their business, and there’s one important reason why. At the end of the day it won’t be worth much at all because any “.com.au” domains registered after April 2016 aren’t eligible to get the same name as a “.au” domain. When I brought that up at the forum, they as much as admitted it’s true.
If you have a contested domain name, you may not be able to get it — but the government might. A lot of domain names could be decided by auction. In other words, whoever is willing to pay the most could get the rights to the name. If you’ve spent a lot of time and money building your brand under “.com.au”, you may to have to spend a lot of money to get the rights to “.au”. Fix this now with any new business and don’t bother registering anything with “.com.au”.
There’s a lot of money to be made from this problem, but it’s mostly in my business. People are going to rake in piles of money from cleaning up people’s mistakes, trying to figure out how to keep their good name online without newer companies taking advantage of the situation.
Help to fix this by emailing senator.fifield@aph.gov.au to let him know how you feel. Then email policy.review@auda.org.au and demand that they release the audio of this public meeting so others can see that it’s not good public policy, just a greedy grab for cash.
This article was originally published on stewartmedia.com.au
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Jim Stewart is a leading expert in search engine optimisation. His business StewArt Media has worked with clients including Mars, M2 and the City of Melbourne.
