100% Australian owned and operated
The short answer
If you sell mainly to Australians and have an ABN (Australian Business Number) or ACN (Australian Company Number), a .com.au is the usual choice: about three in four .au names use it, and Google reads a country ending as a sign a site is meant for that country. A direct .au (yourname.au) suits a shorter name, or an Australian without an ABN. A .com suits selling overseas.
- The ending barely moves your ranking. Google calls it “usually a low impact signal”, and outside country targeting it doesn’t prefer any ending.
- A .com.au or .au comes with eligibility rules you have to keep meeting, and they’re checked again at renewal. A .com has none.
- A country ending targets one country. If most of your customers are overseas, a .com is the usual base.
- Compare the five-year cost at the renewal price, not the first-year deal. Whether to hold a second ending as well is a separate question, answered in Do you need the .au as well?
A note on interest: Chill Domains sells all three endings. The advice in this guide holds wherever you register.
Which should a new business choose? Three questions
Usually a .com.au. These three questions show whether you’re an exception; answer them in order, and most people are done after the second.
Can you meet the .com.au rules?
You need an ABN, an ACN, an ARBN (Australian Registered Body Number, held by bodies such as a foreign company registered in Australia) or an Australian trade mark, and the name has to be tied to you (details below). If you can, go to question 2. If you can’t, but you’re an Australian citizen or permanent resident, or otherwise have what auDA (.au Domain Administration, the body that sets the rules for every .au name) calls an “Australian presence”, a .au is open to you: carry on to question 2, because if most of your customers are overseas, a .com still fits better. With no Australian connection at all, choose a .com. Starting out without an ABN? Registering a domain without an ABN covers your options.
Are most of your customers in Australia?
Yes: a .com.au is the usual choice, or a .au if question 1 ruled the .com.au out. A .au also works if a shorter name genuinely helps and you’re comfortable with the less common ending; just under one .au name in five is a direct .au. Mostly overseas: a .com, because a country ending can only target one country.
Is the name free, and who holds the matching ones?
Before you commit, look up the same name in all three endings. If someone else holds one of them, think about misdirected email and confused customers before you build a business on the name. The lookups are free at the source: for the .com.au and .au, auDA’s WHOIS (the public record of who holds a domain) at whois.auda.org.au; for the .com, the lookup run by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which sets the rules for generic endings such as .com) at lookup.icann.org. Or use the WHOIS tab of our free toolbox: it needs no account, shows whether each name is registered and, for names held elsewhere, links you to those same official lookups.
How do .com.au, .au and .com compare?
The two Australian endings share auDA’s rules and differ mainly in who can register and which names they allow. The .com is global and open to anyone. Prices are further down. (Australia also has .net.au, .org.au and .id.au; this guide sticks to the three in its title.)
| .com.au | .au (direct) | .com | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who can register | Australian commercial entities (ABN, ACN or ARBN), or Australian trade mark holders | Anyone with an Australian presence: citizens, permanent residents, ABN holders, registered organisations, Australian trade mark holders | Anyone, anywhere |
| Name rules | Must match your name or its acronym, your trade mark, or (currently) something you sell or provide | Any available name you’re allowed to use; the trade mark route needs an exact match | None |
| Eligibility checked again at renewal | Yes | Yes | No |
| Longest term per registration | 5 years | 5 years | 10 years |
| Country signal to Google | Australia | Australia* | None from the ending; Google uses other signals |
| Share of all .au names, August 2026 | About 75% | About 18.5% | Not a .au name |
| Public record | The registrant’s name (the person or organisation the domain is registered to) and ABN or ACN; no privacy option | The registrant’s name, and ABN or ACN if used; no privacy option | Personal contact details are often redacted already; WHOIS privacy, a service that keeps your details out of public lookups, can hide more |
* We found no Google page that compares .com.au and .au by name. Both end in .au, which isn’t on Google’s list of country endings it treats as generic, so Google’s guidance on country endings applies to both. That’s our reading of Google’s documents, not something Google has said.
In August 2026 the .au registry (the master list of every name ending in .au) held 4,416,817 names: 3,310,653 com.au and 819,002 direct .au, about four to one. Direct .au launched on 24 March 2022. Since August 2023 it has grown slowly, from 779,226 names to 819,002, with a small dip in 2024 along the way.
Who can register each one, and what do you need?
A .com.au needs a business connection to Australia, a .au needs any Australian presence, and a .com needs only your contact details.
- .com.au needs an ABN, ACN or ARBN, or an Australian trade mark (registered or applied for). The name must connect to you: under clause 2.4.4 of auDA’s Licensing Rules it can match your name or its acronym, match your trade mark, or be a match or synonym of a service, goods, an event, an activity or premises you provide or run. You don’t need a registered business name: a sole trader with an ABN can use their own name.
- .au direct needs an “Australian presence” (clause 2.4.3). That covers Australian citizens and permanent residents, Australian trade mark holders, and organisations registered in Australia, including anyone with an ABN. Any available name you have permission to use is fine, except that a trade-mark-based registration must match the mark exactly.
- .com has no eligibility rules. Anyone, anywhere can register one.
A .com.au rule that may change. In August 2026 the auDA Board approved, in principle, a review panel’s recommendations that include removing the route that lets a .com.au match something you sell or provide, rather than your name or trade mark. It isn’t in force, and no effective date has been set. auDA said on 25 September 2026 that it aims to start public consultation by the end of October 2026. It has also said no current or proposed rule will require you to hold a business name identical to your domain to keep it. Our guide to auDA’s proposed .com.au changes explains who it would affect.
General information, not legal advice. auDA’s Licensing Rules are the authority on eligibility and on what counts as permission to use a name.
Does the ending change where you rank on Google?
Barely. Google treats a ccTLD (country-code top-level domain, a two-letter country ending such as .au) as a strong signal of which country a site is meant for. As a ranking factor, though, it calls the ending “usually a low impact signal”, and outside country targeting it doesn’t prefer any ending. The catch, from the same documents: a country ending can only target one country.
| You may have heard | What Google says |
|---|---|
| “A .com.au ranks higher in Australia.” | The ending tells Google which country you’re aiming at. As a ranking factor, it’s a low-impact signal. |
| “Set your .com to Australia in Search Console.” | That setting is gone. Google has deprecated the International Targeting report in Search Console (its free dashboard for site owners), and says country targeting there is no longer supported. It was removed in 2022. |
| “Host in Australia to rank in Australia.” | Server location is one signal among several, and Google says it isn’t a definitive one. |
| “A country ending works everywhere.” | A country ending can only target one country. |
| “Keywords in the domain help.” | On their own, keywords in a domain name have hardly any effect. |
With a .com, how does Google know you’re Australian?
From everything else about your business online. Google’s multi-regional guide lists the signals it uses, and most of them cost nothing to set up today:
- your Google Business Profile, Google’s free listing for a business on Search and Maps, where one is available to you
- a local address and phone number on the site
- the language and currency your pages use
- links from other local sites
- hreflang annotations, a line of code that tells search engines which language and region a page is written for
Google says it ignores geo meta tags (location tags hidden in a page’s code), so don’t bother with those.
Do Australians trust one ending more than another?
According to auDA’s own research, yes: com.au is the most trusted business ending in Australia, and direct .au is now as trusted as .com. But auDA runs .au, and we found neither published figures behind those two findings nor any independent comparison.
What the surveys say, and who paid for them.
- 2026: no sample, dates or figures published. auDA’s 2026 product guide is written for the registrars (companies accredited to add names to the registry) and resellers (businesses, like us, that sell names through a registrar) who sell .au. It says auDA runs annual brand tracking among consumers and small and medium businesses, and it cites 2026 research by Sagacity Research. It calls com.au “the most trusted commercial namespace in Australia” (namespace is auDA’s word for an ending such as com.au) and says direct .au is now as trusted as .com. The guide gives no sample size, fieldwork dates or percentages for either line.
- 2024: method published. auDA’s statement of 12 February 2025 reported a March 2024 online survey by Sagacity Research of more than 2,100 Australians: 862 small businesses and 840 consumers who held or were considering a domain name (or, for the businesses, had an online presence), and 460 people planning to start a business within three years. auDA says three in four Australians are more likely to trust an Australian business with a .au website, and half of Australian consumers will only buy online from a business whose website ends in .au. That covers .au as a whole; it doesn’t rank com.au against direct .au.
Older studies, from 2014 and 2019, predate direct .au. The fair reading: auDA’s research links an Australian ending of either kind with trust, and no independent study we found measures the gap between com.au and direct .au.
What does each one cost over five years?
Five years is one registration plus four renewals, so the renewal price matters more than the first-year deal: add the first-year price to four times the renewal price or, where the two are the same, multiply the yearly price by five. At Chill Domains, each ending’s list price is the same whether you register or renew (except premium names, which some registries charge more for), so at today’s list price five years costs $100 for a .com.au, $100 for a .au and $140 for a .com, including GST (Goods and Services Tax).
| Ending | A year at Chill Domains (inc GST) | Five years at today’s list price (inc GST) |
|---|---|---|
| .com.au | $20 | $100 |
| .au | $20 | $100 |
| .com | $28 | $140 |
Some providers will beat our $28 in the first year. Ours is the same $28 every year, so compare renewal prices before you choose a provider, us included.
Wherever you buy, check four things:
- The renewal price. You pay it for four of the five years.
- The minimum term. Some advertised deals need a two- or three-year purchase.
- GST. Whether the price you’re comparing includes it.
- What’s included. DNS (Domain Name System) hosting, email forwarding and, for a .com, WHOIS privacy can be included or sold as add-ons.
Comparing .au prices you noted before October? auDA’s wholesale price rise on 1 October 2026 may have moved them. What changed with .au prices in October 2026 explains it.
What do you have to keep doing to hold each one?
For a .com.au or .au, you have to stay eligible for the whole licence, not just at renewal. auDA’s rules let a licence that no longer qualifies be suspended or cancelled, and your registrar checks again before the licence is renewed, including any ABN or ACN on it. For a .com, just keep renewing.
Either way you don’t own the name outright: a .com.au or .au is a licence, and a .com is a registration for a set term. If your ABN is cancelled or the business changes structure, deal with it straight away: auDA’s rules ask you to tell your registrar about changes to the details on your licence within 14 days of becoming aware of them. The ABN check at .com.au renewal explains what’s checked, and changing the registrant of a .com.au covers moving the licence to a new person or entity.
What if you sell overseas, now or later?
A country ending can only target one country, so if most of your customers are, or will be, overseas, a .com is the usual base. An Australian business can hold a .com.au for local customers as well; when a second ending is worth holding has its own guide.
You’re also not locked in. If you outgrow your first choice, register the new name, move the site, and set up 301 redirects (permanent redirects that send visitors and search engines to the new address) at your web host. Google’s site-move guide advises keeping them for at least a year, using the Change of Address tool in Search Console (which tells Google your site has moved to a new domain), and expecting rankings to fluctuate while it recrawls. www, redirects and forwarding explains redirects.
Does the ending matter for email?
Yes, often more than for search. The ending you choose is also your email address, so it goes on every invoice and business card, and changing it later is usually a bigger job than moving the website. Email and your domain explains how mail finds you.
- Matching names in other endings. If someone else holds your name in another ending, a customer who types the wrong one may be emailing that holder instead of you.
- Lookalike letters. Scamwatch, the scam-warning site run by the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission), has warned about letters dressed up as renewal notices that actually sell you a similar name, its example being a .com instead of your .com.au. Keeping your domain safe and domain renewal scams in Australia show how to spot them.
Should you register more than one ending?
Not by default. Each extra name is another renewal to pay and, for a .au name, another licence to keep eligible. Do you need the .au as well? sets out when a second name earns its keep.
At Chill Domains. We sell all three: .com.au and .au at $20 a year and .com at $28, inc GST, the same list price whether you register or renew, and there’s no transfer fee. If a list price ever changes, it changes for everyone at the same time, and your reminder email shows the current price before you renew. We collect your eligibility details at checkout; names are registered through an auDA- and ICANN-accredited wholesale registrar partner, and the registrar validates those details. DNS hosting and email forwarding are included. You can sign in with a passkey, which uses your device’s fingerprint, face or PIN (personal identification number) instead of a password, and add two-factor codes (a second, one-time code at sign-in). A .com gets free WHOIS privacy that stays off until you switch it on. Reminders go out 30 days, 7 days and 1 day before expiry; for .au names, they mention the ABN check.
Questions people ask
Can I still set my .com to target Australia in Google Search Console?
Is yourname.au the same licence as yourname.com.au?
Will a .au rank differently from a .com.au?
Do I need an ABN for any of them?
Do I need a registered business name for a .com.au?
How many years can I register each one for?
What if I pick the wrong one?
What about .co or .io?
Are the .com.au name rules changing?
Terms in this guide
- ccTLD
- Country-code top-level domain: a two-letter country ending such as .au. Google uses most of them as a sign of which country a site is for.
- gTLD
- Generic top-level domain, such as .com. Most are open to anyone, anywhere.
- TLD
- Top-level domain: the last part of a domain name, such as .au or .com.
- auDA
- .au Domain Administration, the body that sets the rules for every .au name.
- Eligibility
- The rules on who may hold a .au name. You have to keep meeting them for as long as you hold the name, and they’re checked again when you renew.
- Licence
- What you hold when you register a .au name: the right to use it for a set period, not ownership.
- Registrant
- The person or organisation a domain is registered to.
- Registry
- The master list of every name under one ending, and the organisation that keeps it.
- Registrar
- A company accredited to add and change names in a registry.
- Reseller
- A business that sells and supports domains through an accredited registrar, without being a registrar itself. Chill Domains is one.
- WHOIS
- The public lookup that shows who holds a domain and its status.
- WHOIS privacy
- A service that hides your contact details in the public record of a .com or similar name. It isn’t available for .au names.
- 301 redirect
- A permanent redirect that sends visitors and search engines from an old address to a new one.
Every term, in full, is in the glossary.
Sources
All read on 6 October 2026.
- Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites (Google Search Central): country endings as a signal of the target country, the one-country limit, the other locale signals (including your Business Profile and geo meta tags), and the country endings Google treats as generic.
- SEO Starter Guide (Google Search Central; SEO is search engine optimisation): the ending as a low-impact ranking signal, and keywords in domain names.
- Site moves with URL changes (Google Search Central; a URL is a web address): how long to keep redirects, the Change of Address tool, and ranking fluctuations.
- The International Targeting report is deprecated (Google Search Console Help): the report is deprecated, and Search Console country targeting is no longer supported.
- Google Search Console to remove International Targeting report (Search Engine Land): the 2022 removal date, which Google’s own page doesn’t give.
- com.au domain names (auDA): who can register a com.au, the accepted identifiers and terms of one to five years.
- .au direct domain names (auDA): the Australian presence requirement and terms.
- .au direct Priority Allocation Process (auDA): direct .au’s start date, 24 March 2022, when its priority allocation opened.
- .au Domain Administration Rules: Licensing (auDA): clauses 2.4.3 (Australian presence), 2.4.4 (com.au name rules), 2.11.5–2.11.9 (staying eligible for the whole licence, and reporting changes within 14 days) and 2.14.2 (renewal).
- .au Licensing Rules Review: recommendations status and next steps (auDA, 25 September 2026): the proposed removal of the com.au product and service route, and its status.
- Registry Monthly Statistics, August 2026 (auDA): the number of com.au and direct .au names, and direct .au growth since 2023.
- .au product guide 2026 (auDA): the 2026 trust lines for com.au and direct .au, and how auDA describes its research.
- Australians seek .au online as a marker of trust (auDA, 12 February 2025): the March 2024 survey, who was asked, and its findings.
- Beware of unsolicited domain name registration offers (Scamwatch, 19 December 2016): renewal-style letters that sell a lookalike name.
Keep reading
- Do you need the .au as well? When a second ending is worth holding.
- Registering a domain without an ABN: the options if you’re not trading yet.
- The ABN check at .com.au renewal: what’s checked, and how to stay ahead of it.
- What is a domain name? Endings, second-level names and the licence you hold.
- Registry, registrar, reseller: who does what behind your domain.
- What the world can see about your domain: the public record for .au and .com names.