As in most of the world, Australia is switching over to allow people to register the shorter .au domain for their website. This will replace the existing websites from .com.au or .net.au to .au.
In most people's view, people are looking for speed of use, so the AU will become the dominant domain as it has overseas. If you have an Australian website for your business, you must reserve your website with the shorter domain AU. If not, it soon becomes available to the general public. The consequences of not registering your existing business name by the deadline could be catastrophic for your online business. A rival could take your online site name. From personal experience, I can tell you that unscrupulous people with little morals will steal your business name if they can. What we are doing for our clients is telling them to register the shortened AU name. Then set up an automatic redirect so people going to the short website .au will direct to the current longer one. This is no long-term solution. It will hurt your SEO doing this. Your site needs to be converted to AU.
I know it's a short deadline, but what can we do? I have asked, and NO extension would be available to give us time.
Act now. It is happening in September.
