A valid client ABN or ACN doesn't automatically make any available .com.au name registrable. The domain still has to meet the .au allocation rules, and the registrant details need to reflect the actual holder. auDA has also approved in principle removing goods, services, events, activities or premises as an allocation basis, although that change is not live yet. Has anyone building Australian client sites run into this? What was the real blocker?
A bit unrelated (and not to slam their business), but as a classifieds site owner, I check out other platforms. I feel like using gumtree.com (and gumtree.co.uk) for the UK and gumtree.com.au for Australia, wasn't a great decision. Do folks in Australia automatically add .au when typing the URL? Otherwise, they'll end up on the UK site. I guess most people use the mobile app, so maybe it doesn't matter?
I would say they do assume all local sites are .com.au over the ditch in NZ we have the .co.nz and .nz for our business, but initially we could only get the .nz - and there was quite a bit of pushback with people thinking we'd goofed by leaving out the ".co". There are now some high profile businesses using .nz and that has made life much easier. I should check our stats and see how often people do type in the .co.nz but most traffic comes from search or ads so it's not a big deal.
The trap most people fall into is that the ABN only proves who the registrant is — it says nothing about whether the name itself is eligible. Under auDA's rules, the domain still has to be a close match to the registrant's business name or trademark, so a valid ABN alone never lets you register just any name. The nastiest blocker is when the name passes the registrar's checkout and then fails a compliance review afterward, because by then someone has already started building on it. Registrant details matter as well: the record should reflect the actual client entity, not the contractor doing the work. Before any build starts, I'd confirm the name-to-entity match against the ABN record first.
Thank you for your opinions If losing a Telegram account also meant losing the address, that would rule it out as a main business domain for me. I wouldn’t want to replace that address across invoices, business cards and customer emails later.