What is AU Direct?
If you haven’t heard the big kerfuffke yet the Australia Domain Authority (AuDA) has finally implemented a new top level domain (TLD) for Australia they are marketing as “AU direct”. What is this? Historically you could only purchase a .com.au eg https://dezigndigital.com.au domain whereas as of today you can now (potentially) purchase a .au domain https://dezigndigital.au
.au domains were supposed to be released years ago but there has been a massive pushback by the community. Most businesses see this new domain as a money grab and yet another domain that they will have to purchase (because if they don’t, the potential is someone else could buy it and 1) cyber-squat 2) competitors use it for their marketing in a hope your brand will be misrepresented/redirect to their website 3) for malicious purposes). Because of this and the long public consultation there are some rules that have been implemented.
If you own a top level domain eg .com.au or .net.au or org.au you can apply for priority registration until 20th September this year. If no one else has the same name you can priority purchase the new .au domain instantly. If there are two registrations for the same domain eg business.com.au applies for business.au also someone else who owns business.net.au also applies for business.au then the domain authority will look at it in the following categories.
Category 1 – Holders of domain names created prior to 4 February 2018.
Category 2 – Holders of domain names created on or after 4 February 2018 but prior to 24 March 2022.
What this means is who held the domain the longest – it will go to them. The gotcha is if the domain was held for the same amount of time listed in category 1 or 2 then potentially no one is a winner. If two people apply and they are both deemed to be in category 1 or category 2 the .au domain is held by AuDA and not released to the market at all until one person removes their claim to it. Basically AuDA would like you to mediate it between yourselves or no one gets the domain. Please see the attached fact sheet.
Keep in mind on the 20th of September AuDA opens the flood gates and whatever .au direct domain that hasn’t been reserved or purchased is opened up to the world community.
What should you do about this?
If you wish to buy the .au domain, Dezign Digital a domain wholesaler is offering .au domains for $19.95 until September. Please reply to this email specifically listing your domains that you also wish for in .au and Dezign Digital will investigate for you.
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