Domain speak: ‘What is a TLD?’

Top Level Domains (otherwise known as TLDs) refers to the part of the domain name located to the right of the dot (” . “). The most common TLDs are .com, .net and .org. Others can include .biz, .info, and .ws. Common TLDs all have certain guidelines, but are generally available to any registrant, anywhere in the world, whereas some ccTLDs (Country-Code) (.AU / .UK / .IO, etc.) have additional transfer requirements and/or exclude some points from the list above. Please check the specific transfer requirements for your TLD here.

.AU is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) representing Australia. At the moment, it is not possible to register directly a top-level .AU domain (such as mycompany.au). The naming rules for .AU require registrations under second-level categories that describe a type of entity.

Opened second-level domains (available for the public) that you can register are:

.COM.AU – commercial entities
.NET.AU – registered companies
.ORG.AU – associations and non-profit organisations

Other opened domains are:

.ID.AU – Australian citizens (individuals) only
.ASN.AU – associations, political parties and clubs

Closed second-level domains (restricted to certain sectors):

.EDU.AU – educational institutions
.GOV.AU – governments and their departments
.CSIRO.AU – CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation)

**.AU domain names can contain up to 63 characters, with a minimum of two characters. These characters can be letters (a to z), numbers (0 to 9) and hyphens (except at the beginning or the end of a domain name; double hyphens are not allowed as well). Also, you cannot register domain names with special characters such as & and #.

You can register **.AU domain names for 2 years only.