I have acquired ".com.au" and ".au" domain name for my business which is targeting audience in Australia.
Just wondering what domain name should I start putting out?
.com.au is more common while .au is new and makes website and email lot easier to write.
Domain name have 7 alphabates.
I would appreciate your help and input.
I reckon even if you told people your website was .au, people would still put .com.au as they'd think you missed the .com as a mistake.
IMO .com.au is far more widely recognised and accepted and is the one I'd use BUT for a relatively small outlay you could register the .au as well just to prevent someone else from doing so if your venture takes off and just redirect it to the .com.au domain.
lot easier to write.
? Idk about lot…
Domain name have 7 alphabates.
Those alphabates are pretty exhausting to type. YMMV
If you have acquired both, can one not just redirect to the other?
.com.au should be the standard one and .au can redirect to .com.au so both can be active.
.in
Might want to pick a different company name, those domains are already taken :)
Abcdefgh.com.au is available though
Redirect first to second, then who cares …
.com is good for Yanks who got away from guns & the politicians.
.au is good for Australia
.com.au
I have a .au address for work, and it's (fropanity) annoying every conversation I have… "No, no, no dot com, it's just *business name* dot au…"
2 days later… "I didn't get that email? did you send it? To what address? Oh, no no, it's not dot com… it's just dot au…"
I heard.au on the radio when it first launched and imo it's just another product/service that is not needed but the marketing guys made it a "problem".
No one will ever use .au as the norm for any generation, unless we start brainwashing gen Alpha to use .au
.com.au will make your life easier. I have .au myself only because if people forget to put in .com and even then, how many people are forgetting .com? It's redirected to my .com.au address.
If you asking this question, you probably need professional marketing advice for whatever business you running.
.au seems like a scam .. like it could be Austria
.au is Australia.
.at is Austria.
Why would Austria drop the .com part and suddenly decide to use .au?
abcdefg.xxx
I use stones for my body weight because I REFUSE to change.
Dumb aeronautical industry had to crash some planes to move from gallons to metric.
Anyway use both in the meantime but progression will never stop…..
Dumb aeronautical industry had to crash some planes to move from gallons to metric.
Well, I'll have you know that aircraft crashed as a result of that transition where erroneous conversions were made (see Air Canada 143). And measurements still aren't standardised in every way globally.
Go to the straight .au. Its short and easier for marketing etc.
It will become the norm and you can redirect the .com.au to that URL.
I've got a few websites now on .AU directly and have had no issues with results of enquiries or querying legitimacy.
Back in the days of the early internet when computers ran on steam etc the domain naming was invented. At the time the intent was global organizations would use the global names like .com or .gov (Global government ? :) )
Organizations of particular countries would use the domain for that country like .com.au or .com.us. or .gov.us But the US being the US sort of took over things and decided they were global so you wound up with US based organizations taking over global domains based on the likes of .com or .gov when they should have been using .gov.us or .com.us. . There are still people around who get confused with .au domains thinking it refers to something in Austin Tx …
So if you are an Australian based business for Australian access you should use a .au domain. But you could have a .com if you are a global business and use geolocation to redirect people in Australian to the appropriate Australian page
Register both! - also the common misspellings (if you can afford and are available)
Redirect everything to .com.au
Use .com.au in marketing / promotions.
Reason: .com.au is the most common one and will be more familiar and easier to remember for your customers.
That's exactly what I did. There didn't seem to be any good reason not to do so given how cheap domain names are.
My biggest gripe was it takes longer for .au DNS changes to action. Otherwise it was no different to any other domain name.
My biggest gripe was it takes longer for .au DNS changes to action.
Sounds like you're referring to an incident that happened at the launch that was promptly fixed and there should be no affect on DNS changes.
.com and .com.au changes generally happen in minutes for me. The .au domain didn't update for 24 hours.
It's not the end of the world, it's just something to be aware of.
@cfuse: And as I stated, this was an issue that was only affecting domain names for a handful of days at the beginning of the launch a year ago.
If you're still having these issues now they are purely propagation and time to live related issues which could affect any domain extension.
If your registrar is not applying authoritative name server changes immediately to the registry you should be talking to them. Because there's definitely an issue they need to investigate.
Also, if .com is taken, for international purpose, should i go for .io? i really dont like .io but i have no choice at the moment, i need advice too, thanks
Try .co.
.io seems to be a bit more for tech tools/systems.
Personally .co is probably not going to work the same way that .io does for Tech projects. As I said in my other reply, there is much better options.
I am on same situation issue with the OP and i would like to hear more from Ozers, i do own both .au and .com.au but i dont know which one should be uses mainly!!
Also, if .com is taken, for international purpose, should i go for .io? i really dont like .io but i have no choice at the moment, i need advice too, thanks
If the primary audiences Australia and your.com is taken you don't really need to use another domain name for international. Just use one of the .au's you already own.
And personally I wouldn't use another country code .io or specially .co there's a lot more new gTLD choices that would be more appropriate than that one.
Thanks everyone for valuable input, going ahade with ".com.au".
.com.au is the norm and accepted.