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The .com.au/.net.au Rule Change: What Business Owners Actually Need to Know

Q: I own several .com.au domains under one business - does every single domain need to individually match my registered name or trademark, or does having one compliant domain cover my whole portfolio?

Every domain. Allocation is assessed per Domain Name Licence , not per business - the current rules describe how a person or entity meets the connection test "for a particular Domain Name," and there's no provision for one compliant domain to cover others in a portfolio. If you hold, say, ten .com.au domains and only two match your registered name or trademark, the other eight would each need their own basis for eligibility (a matching business name, trademark, or - until it's removed - a genuine service/goods/event/premises connection).

Written By:

Saijo George

September 8, 2026

TL;DR

On 6 September 2026, auDA officially confirmed its Board approved, “in-principle,” recommendations from a 12-month independent policy review.
The big one: auDA is removing the option to register a .com.au/.net.au domain just because it matches a service, product, event, activity or premises name. Once it lands, a domain will only qualify by matching your own registered name or an exact-match Australian trademark.
This is not law yet. auDA still has to write an Implementation Plan, draft the actual rule wording, and run another public consultation. No effective date or transition arrangements have been published.
Separate and already-live: since 20 May 2026, registrars already block renewal if your linked ABN/ACN isn’t genuinely active. Don’t confuse the two.
Do now: audit what basis each .com.au domain qualifies on, fix anything already broken, and watch for the draft-rules consultation – that’s your real window to weigh in.

Last updated: 8 September 2026

Why this matters (and why there’s so much confusion about it)

If you’ve seen a panicked headline this week – like Domainer’s “auDA Board Just Voted to Destroy the .com.au Name Space” – you might think your website is about to disappear. It isn’t, at least not yet. But there genuinely is a significant policy change working its way through the system, and it’s worth understanding properly rather than panicking or dismissing it.

There are actually three separate things going on with .au domains right now, and mixing them up is where most of the confusion (including in some of the articles going around) comes from:

#	What it is	Status	Effective
1	Trust ABN eligibility – a `.au` domain can’t be registered to a Trust itself, only to the trustee	Already in force (long-standing rule)	Ongoing
2	Active ABN/ACN verification at renewal – registrars now check your ABN/ACN is currently active, not just on file	Already in force	Since 20 May 2026
3	Allocation rules overhaul (Recommendation 2 of the Licensing Rules Review) – removes the “matches a service/product/event/premises name” pathway to eligibility	Approved in-principle by the Board; NOT yet drafted into rules; another public consultation still to come	No date yet

This blog post is mostly about #3, because that’s what the recent news is about and it’s the one with the biggest long-term impact – but we’ll cover all three, because if you own a .com.au domain you should know about all of them.

Part 1: The big one – what’s actually changing (Recommendation 2)

The plain-English version

To hold a .com.au or .net.au domain, auDA requires that the domain name have a “close and substantial connection” to you or your business. Right now, there are several ways to satisfy that:

The domain matches or is an acronym of your own registered name (company, business, trust, statutory, partnership, personal or sole-trader name).
The domain is an exact match for your registered Australian trademark.
The domain matches a service you provide, goods you sell, an event you run or sponsor, an activity, or a premises name – even if none of that literally matches your registered business name.

That last bullet point is the one being removed. In auDA’s own words from its 6 September 2026 statement, the approved recommendation is:

“Removing the option to use the name of a service, goods, event, activity or premises to meet allocation rules for com.au and net.au.”

Once the actual rule change is drafted and takes effect, you’ll only be able to justify a .com.au/.net.au domain through your registered name or an exact-match trademark – not through a generic description of what you do or sell.

A simple to understand example

Say your company is legally registered as “Bayview Trading Pty Ltd,” but you also run plumbingrepairsmelbourne.com.au because it describes the service you offer and it’s great for local SEO. Today, that’s allowed under the “matches a service you provide” clause. Under the new rule, that clause no longer exists – so unless “Plumbing Repairs Melbourne” is also your registered business name or a registered trademark, that domain would fail the eligibility test.

The exact wording of what’s being deleted (subparagraph (f) of clause 2.4.4(2) of the .au Licensing Rules) currently permits a match to:

“a Service that the Person provides; Goods that the Person sells; an event that the Person registers or sponsors” (plus premises/activity names)

quoted via Domainer’s piece.

Who this actually affects

Businesses whose domain describes what they do, not who they are – the “plumbingrepairsmelbourne.com.au” example above is the most common real-world case.
Event, campaign, or pop-up domains – a one-off event or expo domain that doesn’t match a registered entity name.
Premises- or location-named domains – e.g. a domain named after an office address or venue rather than the operating company.
Domain investors and “domainers” who hold portfolios of generic/descriptive .com.au names for resale or advertising monetisation, rather than running a business that matches the name. Domainer’s own estimate is that around 17% of all .au domains (roughly 582,895 names) are held in portfolios of 50+ domains, which gives a sense of scale – though that’s an industry estimate, not an official auDA figure.
Drop-catching services, which rely heavily on generic descriptive names becoming available and being re-registered on this basis.

Who is NOT directly affected (probably)

If your .com.au domain already matches your registered company/business/trading name, nothing changes for you.
If your domain is protected by an exact-match Australian trademark, nothing changes for you (note: it has to be an exact match – a broader “close connection” to a trademark isn’t enough, a tightening that goes back to 2021 rule changes).
Straightforward domain monetisation itself isn’t being banned – Recommendation 1 of the same review explicitly kept the current approach that allows monetised sites in .com.au/.net.au/.au. The problem is specifically the eligibility basis, not monetisation as an activity.

Which domain extensions are actually affected?

This is the other big source of confusion – people see “.au” in the headlines and assume every Australian-flavoured domain is at risk, or conversely assume it doesn’t apply to them because they don’t own a literal .com.au. Here’s the actual scope, extension by extension:

Extension	Example	Affected by Recommendation 2?	Why
`.com.au`	`yourbusiness.com.au`	Yes	This is the exact namespace named in auDA’s statement.
`.net.au`	`yourbusiness.net.au`	Yes	Named alongside `.com.au` in the same recommendation, same rule change.
`.au` (direct, “second-level”)	`yourbusiness.au`	Not named in Recommendation 2 – but unconfirmed either way	auDA’s statement scopes the change to “com.au and net.au” only. The review’s Recommendation 3 (which recommends no change) only covers how contested `.au direct` names get resolved, not eligibility generally. Whether `.au direct` has its own equivalent “service/goods” allocation clause hasn’t been confirmed in our research – worth watching if you hold one.
`.org.au` / `.asn.au`	`yourcharity.org.au`	No	Associations and non-profits are assessed on incorporation/association status, not the business-name-or-trademark test in clause 2.4.4(2) that’s being changed.
`.id.au`	`yourname.id.au`	No	Personal/individual namespace with its own separate eligibility rules.
`.edu.au`	`youruni.edu.au`	No	Restricted to eligible education providers under its own separate eligibility framework, not clause 2.4.4(2).
`.gov.au`	`youragency.gov.au`	No	Government namespace, administered under entirely separate rules from the general .au Licensing Rules.
`.com` / `.net` / `.org`	`yourbusiness.com`	No	Global generic top-level domains with no connection to auDA or Australian eligibility rules at all – completely different registry.
`.io`	`yourbusiness.io`	No	A ccTLD unrelated to Australia, run by a different registry entirely.

The short version: if it’s not .com.au or .net.au, this specific rule change doesn’t apply to it.

Is this actually final? (Short answer: no, not yet)

This is the most important nuance missing from a lot of the reaction pieces. Here’s the real sequence of events, straight from auDA’s own published timeline:

September 2025 – the auDA Board approves an independent Policy Advisory Panel to review the whole .au Licensing Rules.
September 2025 – March 2026 – first round of public consultation (submissions, town halls, in-person workshops in Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne).
June 2026 – the Panel releases a Draft Report for a second round of consultation. On the allocation-rules question specifically, the Draft Report actually put up three different options (increase compliance checks / clarify definitions / delete subparagraph (f)) and said explicitly that “further consultation is needed before reaching a final position,” noting a minority of the panel disagreed with the eventual direction.
4 June – 10 July 2026 – second public consultation window on the Draft Report (auDA says it received 34 written submissions, 31 published).
27 August 2026 – the auDA Board meets and resolves to approve the Panel’s final recommendations “in-principle,” including going with the “delete subparagraph (f)” option for allocation rules.
6 September 2026 – auDA publishes the official statement confirming this.
7-8 September 2026 – the domain-investor press (Domainer) reports on it in strong terms.
Next (no date yet) – auDA has said it will prepare an Implementation Plan “that takes into account the impact of the Recommendations on registrants,” then draft the actual rule wording and an explanatory guide, and publish both for a further round of public consultation before anything is locked in. auDA’s own words: it will “provide regular updates on key dates and any transition arrangements in the coming months.”

So: “in-principle Board approval” is not the same as “the rule has changed.” There is still a drafting phase and another consultation round to come, and – importantly – no transition or grandfathering arrangement for existing registrants has been announced yet. That’s the single biggest open question right now, and it’s exactly where public feedback could still make a difference to how this is implemented, even if the direction itself has already had two rounds of consultation.

Can it be stopped?

Realistically, no – not the underlying decision. The “delete subparagraph (f)” direction has already been through two public consultation rounds (Phase 1 and Phase 2, which closed 10 July 2026) and been approved in-principle by the Board. What’s genuinely still open is the implementation detail: how long registrants get to fix a non-compliant domain, whether there’s a grace/grandfathering period, how enforcement is staged, and exactly how the new rules are worded. When auDA publishes the draft rules and explanatory guide for public consultation (watch the Licensing Rules Review page for this), that’s your window to make a submission about those details.

What happens to domains that become ineligible?

auDA hasn’t published transition arrangements yet – its own statement says these details are still to come “in the coming months.” For context, the same review did separately recommend (Recommendation 9 in the Draft Report) that auDA build in some flexibility to let registrants transition to “another appropriate namespace” once they no longer meet .com.au/.net.au eligibility – though that recommendation was framed around businesses that retire or close, not specifically around this allocation-rule change. Don’t take this as a guarantee of a grace period for allocation-rule non-compliance; it just shows auDA has been thinking about soft landings for registrants generally. We’ll update this post once auDA confirms actual transition arrangements.

Part 2: The rule that’s already live – active ABN/ACN verification (20 May 2026)

Don’t lose this one in the noise about Recommendation 2 – it’s a separate, already-enforced rule that’s been catching businesses out since May.

Since 20 May 2026, registrars are required to verify that the ABN or ACN linked to your .au domain is currently active with the ATO/ASIC – not just present on file – before they can process a renewal.
Verification happens during the 90-day window before your domain expires.
If your linked ABN/ACN is inactive, lapsed, deregistered, or has changed, your registrar can block the renewal, which can mean your website and business email stop working until you fix it.
Compliance checks themselves are free, but the fix isn’t automatic – you need to update your domain’s registration details.
Enforcement timing varies by registrar; some (per their own support pages) had already gone live with checks by mid-2026 while others were still rolling it out.

What to do about it: log into your domain registrar account (or ask whoever manages your hosting/domains) and confirm the ABN or ACN attached to your domain is (a) active on the ABN Lookup or ASIC register and (b) actually belongs to the entity that should own the domain. If it’s out of date, update it well before your renewal date – don’t wait for the 90-day window to force the issue.

The related, older Trust ABN issue

This one predates the current review entirely and is still routinely tripping people up: auDA does not allow a .au domain to be registered to a Trust itself. It has to be registered to the trustee – which might be a person, a company, or a partnership. If your domain is currently sitting under a Trust ABN, the fix is a formal Change of Registrant (CoR) to move it to the trustee’s name – the same process typically used when a business is bought or sold. Your registrar can walk you through this; it’s a standard, well-documented process, not a novel one.

Part 3: Other changes landing 1 October 2026

Not related to the eligibility review, but worth knowing if you manage .au domains: auDA has also announced two changes taking effect on 1 October 2026:

A new Quality Performance Index (QPI) Program, which gives registrars rebates for meeting quality, compliance and security benchmarks – this is a registrar-level incentive, not something you as a domain holder need to act on directly, but it may influence which registrar is worth using.
A wholesale price increase for .au domain licences, from AUD $8.64 to $9.50 (ex GST) per year. This is the wholesale rate registrars pay auDA; retail renewal prices (what you actually pay) are set by individual registrars and may move accordingly.

What business owners should actually do right now (checklist)

If you’re not sure where to start, do these in order:

List every .com.au and .net.au domain your business owns (including old ones nobody’s touched in years – these are often the ones with stale ABN/ACN details). This review, and the ABN/ACN checks, are specifically a .com.au/.net.au issue – they don’t apply to .org.au/.asn.au (associations) or .id.au (individuals), which use different eligibility rules. .au direct names (e.g. example.au) are separately unaffected by Recommendation 2 itself (see Recommendation 3), though it’s not yet confirmed whether .au direct‘s own allocation rule has an equivalent clause – worth checking if you hold one.
Check the ABN/ACN linked to each domain is active via ABN Lookup and matches the entity that should legitimately own the domain. Fix any mismatches now, well ahead of your next renewal – this is already-enforced (rule #2 above).
Check if any domain is registered under a Trust ABN. If so, arrange a Change of Registrant to the trustee now – this is also already-required.
For each domain, work out why it’s eligible today: does it match your registered business/company name, an exact-match trademark, or is it justified by describing a service/product/event/premises? If it’s the last one, that’s the category at risk once Recommendation 2 becomes an actual rule.
If a domain only qualifies via the “service/goods/event” pathway, start thinking now about your options once the rule lands – this generally means either (a) registering a matching business name with ASIC, or (b) registering the exact-match wording as an Australian trademark with IP Australia. Costs and timeframes vary depending on whether you do this yourself or use an agent/attorney – get a quote rather than relying on ballpark figures floating around online (some industry commentary has cited rough annual figures in the hundreds of dollars per domain, but treat those as estimates, not quotes).
Don’t panic-register or panic-transfer anything yet – there’s no effective date, and no confirmed transition arrangements. Acting too early on unconfirmed rule wording risks wasted cost and effort.
Bookmark and periodically check auDA’s Licensing Rules Review page for the draft rules consultation – that’s your opportunity to have a say on implementation details (transition periods, staging, etc.). It’s also worth adding Pathfinder Marketing as a preferred source in Google Search so updates like this one surface for you automatically as we cover them, rather than relying on catching the news yourself.
If you use a domain broker, IP lawyer, or SEO/marketing agency, loop them in now rather than after the rules are finalised – especially if you have a portfolio of domains or a domain that’s core to your brand identity but not an exact name/trademark match.

FAQ

Is my .com.au website about to be shut down because of auDA’s new domain eligibility rule?

No. Nothing has changed yet for existing registrants. The rule change has been approved “in-principle” only; auDA still has to draft it, consult on it again, publish an implementation plan, and (based on precedent) will likely include some kind of transition period – though that hasn’t been confirmed.

Do I need to do anything today about auDA’s proposed .com.au allocation rule change, or can it wait?

Not urgently for Recommendation 2 specifically – there’s no effective date. But yes, urgently if your ABN/ACN is inactive or your domain sits under a Trust, since both of those are already-enforced rules that can block a renewal right now.

My .com.au domain describes what I sell or do rather than matching my registered business name – will it lose eligibility under the new allocation rules?

Check whether it’s protected by an exact-match Australian trademark. If not, and it only qualifies today via the “service/goods/event/premises” basis, it’s the category most exposed once the new rule takes effect – though again, there’s no effective date yet.

Can I register an Australian trademark to keep a .com.au domain eligible once auDA’s new allocation rules take effect?

Registering an exact-match Australian trademark is one of the two remaining eligibility pathways once the rule change lands, so it’s a legitimate strategy for domains that matter to your brand. Trademark registration has its own process, cost, and timeframe through IP Australia (and generally takes months, not days) – so if you’re going to do this, the earlier the better, but get proper advice first since trademark law has its own considerations beyond domain eligibility.

Will auDA give me advance warning before my .com.au domain becomes non-compliant under the new allocation rules?

auDA hasn’t confirmed transition or notice arrangements for Recommendation 2 yet. It has said it will provide “regular updates on key dates and any transition arrangements in the coming months.” For the separate, already-live ABN/ACN renewal check, verification happens in your normal 90-day pre-expiry window.

Where can I submit feedback or object to auDA’s proposed .com.au/.net.au allocation rule changes?

The two public consultation windows on the Draft Report (through 10 July 2026) have already closed. The next opportunity will be when auDA publishes the draft rule wording and explanatory guide for consultation – watch the Licensing Rules Review page for this to open.

Is the plain `.au` domain (not `.com.au`) impacted by this allocation rule change?

Not directly, based on what’s been confirmed so far. auDA’s own statement scopes Recommendation 2 to “com.au and net.au” specifically – .au direct names (like yourbusiness.au) aren’t named in it. Separately, Recommendation 3 of the same review only deals with how contested .au direct names get resolved when multiple people apply for the same one, and recommends no change there. What we haven’t been able to confirm is whether .au direct‘s own allocation rule contains an equivalent “matches a service/goods/event” clause to the one being deleted from .com.au/.net.au – if you hold .au direct names, it’s worth keeping an eye on this, but as things stand, the confirmed change is scoped to .com.au/.net.au only.

Is this allocation rule change the same as the news about auDA raising .au domain prices?

No, that’s a separate announcement – the wholesale price of a .au domain licence is rising from $8.64 to $9.50 (ex GST) from 1 October 2026, alongside a new registrar quality rebate program. Different issue, same source (auDA), similar timeframe.

I own several .com.au domains under one business – does every single domain need to individually match my registered name or trademark, or does having one compliant domain cover my whole portfolio?

Every domain. Allocation is assessed per Domain Name Licence, not per business – the current rules describe how a person or entity meets the connection test “for a particular Domain Name,” and there’s no provision for one compliant domain to cover others in a portfolio. If you hold, say, ten .com.au domains and only two match your registered name or trademark, the other eight would each need their own basis for eligibility (a matching business name, trademark, or – until it’s removed – a genuine service/goods/event/premises connection).

What actually happens to a .com.au domain that fails auDA’s eligibility rules – is it deleted straight away, or can someone else grab it?

Under auDA’s existing (already-live) compliance process, a domain flagged as ineligible gets a complaint/audit notice and a chance to fix the details before any cancellation – it isn’t an instant deletion. If it’s ultimately cancelled, standard domain lifecycle rules apply afterwards (the Licensing Rules Review is separately proposing to standardise this to a 30-day redemption period plus a short pending/hold period), after which the name becomes available for anyone – including drop-catching services – to register again. auDA hasn’t yet confirmed whether Recommendation 2 non-compliance will follow this same existing process or a bespoke transition arrangement.

Does owning a large portfolio of .com.au domains (say, 50 or more) make auDA more likely to audit me, even before the new rule takes effect?

There’s no published auDA policy that specifically targets larger portfolios for audits today – proactive compliance audits already happen under the current rules regardless of how many domains you hold. That said, once Recommendation 2 takes effect, a larger portfolio of generically-named domains is simply mathematically more likely to contain at least one name that no longer has an eligibility basis, so portfolio holders have more at stake in getting ahead of this than a business with one or two domains.

One of my .com.au domains matches a business name we’ve since rebranded away from – does it still count as compliant since it used to be accurate?

Probably not, and this is likely to get harder rather than easier: eligibility is generally assessed against your current registered name, and the broader direction of travel (including the 20 May 2026 active-ABN/ACN check) is toward verifying live, current business details rather than historical ones. This exact scenario – a business that’s moved on but wants to keep a legacy domain – is what Recommendation 9 of the Draft Report is trying to address, by giving auDA flexibility to let registrants “transition to another appropriate namespace.” That’s a proposal for a soft landing into a different namespace, not a guarantee you’d keep the .com.au version.

Extra reading

Consultation on .au Licensing Rules Review: Draft Report – the (now closed) Phase 2 consultation page.
Summary of recommendations for consultation (PDF) – short-form version of all draft recommendations, including the exact text of Recommendation 2’s three options.
Registrar quality initiative and wholesale pricing update – the QPI Program and price rise (1 October 2026).
.au Licensing Rules Review: Process, progress and next steps.
Board meetings and minutes – for tracking the formal Board record as minutes are published.

Not sure where your domains stand?

If you’re unsure whether any of your .com.au or .net.au domains rely on the eligibility pathway that’s being removed – or you just want a second set of eyes on your domain and SEO setup before anything changes – get in touch with Pathfinder Marketing. We’re keeping an eye on this as auDA publishes more detail, and we’re happy to help you work through what it means for your business.

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