Originally most websites were US-based and had addresses like NAME.com’. Over time NAME.net became available and it too expanded to include titles such as .live, live.au, .biz or .biz.au, a plethora of options becoming available to website owners and techies.

No doubt you have seen .org, .org.au domain names. The .org signifies the site belongs to a not for profit organisation, proof of which you must supply when applying for a .org domain.

The countries where websites are based, and where it is identified that the major audience for the product or information you provide will come from, are recognised in the name, like how .com.au and .net.au refer to Australian websites, .com.uk for British sites, or .de for German sites.

These domains refer to websites that sell things or provides info to the local consumer/reader/researcher. Every country has this facility for websites to have their country of origin embedded in the name. This tells search engines which countries sites are based in, so enquiries take less time. Speed IS most important on the World Wide Web. The time that it takes for an enquiry to travel from Australia to US and back via undersea cables have a huge effect on searches within Australia.

Whatever the domain name may be in the end, there is a fee, a virtual rental agreement, usually annual or bi-annual, where you pay the internet registration bodies so that you have control of the website linked to your domain name.

Let’s say you have a website, let’s call it doodads.com.au that has a strong following and sells many doodads. As long as your rent is paid that site belongs to you, and can hardly be stolen or copied. However, unless you also rent doodads.com, someone can come along and buy the lease of doodads.com, perfectly legal. They may sell anything they want, including their own doodads, which are an exact copy of your doodads, and you may not even know about it. You can spend lots of money promoting doodads and eventually whenever someone searches for doodads in the country where the doodads.com site is registered they will be taken to doodads.com, and bingo, you’ve wasted money advertising, lost sales and possibly your business.

You can take precautions and buy doodads.com, doodads.net, all of which cost money each year. So at some point you have to make a judgement call. Maybe doodads.com.za is unnecessary to buy as sales from Zambia are too low to bother about as doodads are too expensive.

Global brands, such as big car companies, own all of the possible domain names to prevent someone hijacking, let’s say ford.com.za, and promoting, for eg, anti-government statements, formenting civil disobedience on the website that is against the PR Ford likes to be represented by.

Another possibility is that your doodads.com.au website does very well and sells many many doodads, then domain dealers (someone, for example, who knows how well doodads.com.au is going as a global brand and thinks that doodads.com is worth money) will buy it and offer it for sale for many thousands of dollars.

Advantage of .com

Better for international readership/customers, easier to renew.

.com.au or .net.au etc sites require an ABN (Australian Business Number,) that keeps track of any income that is made and therefore any tax payable.

Registration/lease of .com.au domains is limited to two years (easily renewable) and takes longer to be approved

Advantage of .com.au

If product or info is going to be bought/made/read in Australia then all interaction between site and owner is local, while communications with .com reader/customers will be via the US, via the undersea cables under the Pacific Ocean which can be jammed or cut which can take more time waiting.

Tekwizard can host all of your domains and point them all to your company’s website.