The purpose of this article was to remind people that if they have some .com domains lying around doing nothing, they can revive them for very little work. As you have pointed out, if .com.au domains become simple to get, as long as money is not an issue if you are looking to buy a new domain, the .com.au will be the one to get because all search engines will instantly recognise it as being Australian unlike a .com which has to be manually targeted through Google Only.

Google opened the floodgates by allowing any TLD domain to be appointed to a specific geographic area. Any run on .com.au domains will only increase the problem that already exists.

When things like this happen we all have to live by the same rules so the winners will always be the people who rise above it and make the rules work for them whilst it impedes everyone else.

As I mentioned in the article a proactive agent in lets say Sydney will be able to create a dedicated website just to target New Zealand, plus more to target other areas like London, UK, New York, Los Angeles, US, South Africa. For a good web designer they could easily create unique content for each of these targets all the while building on your current website framework to minmise the cost and complexity.

But the sad thing is that the company that will probably do it is somebody like REA who have the skills nouse and inhouse talent to throw at it for a week and create a huge collection of sites specifically targeted to different cities and countries around the world.. Then they will just sell us the leads!!!

This could make things very interesting for a lot of international companies wanting to appear as local businesses without having to have a physical presence within Australia. Currently they have to register a business within Australia to register the .com.au domain name. The implications of this move could open up a massive can of worms for Australian businesses.

In relation to real estate, this could mean that any staff member or member of the public will have the opportunity to register whatever real estate related .com.au domain name they find available.

This decision won’t just have some damaging ramifications to Australian Business but it could make things very interesting for the real estate industry too.