If your Australian business or online presence operates under a .au namespace (com.au, net.au, org.au or asn.au domain names), you should consider registering your matching .au domain in order to protect your brand.
If you hold a domain name in any .au namespace, and registered your domain prior to 24 March 2022, you are able to
apply for Priority Status to register an exact matching .au domain.
However, you need to act before 20 September 2022 to take full advantage of that priority status.
A key reason to register a .au domain name is to protect your brand. It would be disappointing to discover that a domain name related to your business has been claimed by someone else (especially a competitor).
An Important Point: In order to register a .com.au domain, you would have proven that you're an Australian Commercial Entity. However, eligibility requirements to register .au domains are more relaxed.
Unlike existing namespaces such as com.au and org.au that have specific allocation criteria, there is no allocation criteria that determines which names an eligible person can register in the .au direct namespace.
Anyone with a local connection to Australia (including businesses, associations and individuals) is eligible to register a .au direct name through an auDA accredited registrar (read more about eligibility here).
If no priority applications have been made for the .au direct match of your domain by 20 September 2022, it will be become available for registration on Oct 3rd 2022.
Due to the rapidly approaching deadline, it's not an ideal time to transfer your domain between suppliers, so we recommend that you just use your current domain registrar.
If you're unhappy with your current domain registrar, you can transfer your domain at a later date after your new .au domain has been allocated to you (perhaps early to mid October 2022).
There will be a fee for lodging an application, which varies between domain providers.
The steps to register your .au domain:
To point your new .au domain at your existing Oncord account:
Within your Oncord account, navigate to Dashboard > Settings > Domains.
Click "Park Registered Domain".For "Domain Mode", set it to "Redirect to the primary domain name". Redirection mode should be 301.
Update the domain to use our name servers:
The supplier that you renew your domain name with is called your "Domain Registrar". It's best practice to register / renew all of your domains with one single accredited domain registrar.
It's also important that you're clear who your registrar is, so that you know exactly who to pay when renewal is due, making it less likely you'll fall victim to scams related to domain registration / renewal.
Your web host and domain provider don't necessarily need to be the same company.
If you're an Oncord client, you may have opted to transfer domain registration to us. In that case, you can manage your domain via the Oncord domain portal.
To help locate your domain registrar, you can use the following "WHOIS" tool provided by auDA. Your supplier will be stated under the "Registrar Name", with a "Registrar URL" to help locate their website:
The company you pay to renew your domain may not necessarily be listed as your domain registrar, in the case they are supplied by another domain wholesaler. Many popular Australian accredited domain registrars are supplied by domain wholesalers.
Oncord Clients: If your domain registration is managed by Oncord, when you lookup your registration details the "Registrar Name" will be listed as "Domain Directors Pty Ltd trading as Instra", which is our domain wholesaler. In that case, you can manage your domain registration via https://domains.oncord.com/.
auDA develops and administers the rules for domain names in the .au country code. Their website includes up-to-date information about .au domain registration, and some other domain tools: https://www.auda.org.au/
Accredited Domain Registrars:
https://www.auda.org.au/accredited-registrars
.au Domain Administration Rules: Licensing:
https://www.auda.org.au/policy/au-domain-administration-rules-licensing
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