51% of Australian Businesses Have an Online Presence in 2026

Key takeaways

• 51% of Australian businesses used social media for their online presence in 2024-25, up from 47% in 2021-22 (ABS)
• 32% of Australian businesses received orders online in 2024-25, against 30% three years earlier (ABS)
• More than 91% of businesses said their internet connection met most or all of their business needs in 2024-25 (ABS)
• 2,729,648 businesses were actively trading in Australia at 30 June 2025 (ABS)
• 97.3% of those businesses are small businesses with fewer than 20 employees (ABS, via ASBFEO)
• 80% of Australians trust a business more if it runs a .au website (auDA, 2026)
• 51% of Australians will only buy from a business with a .au website, and 46% check a .au site first (auDA, 2026)
• More than 4.3 million .au domain names are now registered, one for every six Australians (auDA, 2026)

51% of Australian businesses used social media as their online presence in 2024-25, up from 47% in 2021-22, per the ABS. Among Australia’s 2.73 million active businesses, 97.3% are small businesses, and auDA data shows 80% of Australians trust a .au website more.

Just over half of Australia’s businesses, 51%, now run some kind of online presence through social media, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That is up from 47% three years earlier, the fastest jump the ABS has recorded on this measure. But a social media page and a website are not the same thing, and the gap between the two is where a lot of small businesses lose customers before a conversation even starts. Australia’s domain registry, auDA, found that 80% of Australians trust a business more when it runs a proper .au website, and 51% will only buy from one. Meanwhile 2.73 million businesses are actively trading in Australia, and 97.3% of them count as small businesses with fewer than 20 staff. This report lines up the latest verified ABS and auDA numbers so you can see exactly where Australian SMBs stand on web presence in 2026, and where the gap sits for the businesses that show up properly online.

How the ABS Measures Australia’s Online Presence

The ABS tracks business digital behaviour through its Business Characteristics Survey, which covers close to 7,000 Australian businesses. The latest release, covering the 2024-25 financial year, was published 25 June 2026.

The headline number: 51% of businesses used social media for their online presence, up from 47% in 2021-22. That is not a huge jump on paper, but it is the clearest year-on-year lift the survey has shown. Online ordering told a similar story: 32% of businesses received orders online in 2024-25, against 30% three years earlier. And connectivity itself improved too. More than 91% of businesses said their internet connection met most or all of their business needs, up from 88% in 2021-22.

Here is the catch worth sitting with. The ABS measure is about social media, not websites. A business can tick every box in this survey with nothing more than a Facebook page and an Instagram account. That gets a business found, but it does not get a business trusted the way a proper website does, and it does not give a business control over its own customer data the way an owned domain does.

Takeaway: Australia’s official online presence figure is a social media measure, not a website measure, and it only moved four points in three years.

Australia’s 2.7 Million Businesses: Who’s Actually There

Before you can talk about how many businesses are online, it helps to know who those businesses actually are. At 30 June 2025 there were 2,729,648 actively trading businesses in Australia, according to the ABS Counts of Australian Businesses release, published 16 December 2025.

The shape of that population matters. Analysis by the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, using the same ABS data, puts 97.3% of all Australian businesses in the small business bracket, fewer than 20 employees. Non-employing and self-employed operators make up the largest single group at 63.6%, or 1,735,470 businesses. Another 25.2%, or 688,870 businesses, run with one to four staff. A further 8.5%, or 232,129 businesses, employ between five and nineteen people. The remaining 2.7%, around 73,179 businesses, employ twenty or more.

This is the audience the ABS online presence figures describe. Most Australian businesses are not large retailers with a dedicated marketing team. They are sole traders and small operators deciding, often on their own, whether a website is worth the time and cost. That decision shapes the 51% number more than any big-brand digital strategy does.

Takeaway: nearly two in three Australian businesses are a single self-employed operator, which is exactly the group least likely to have the time or budget for a proper website.

Why the .au Domain Still Matters for Trust

Australia’s domain registry, auDA, publishes an annual report called Why .au? that surveys Australian consumers directly about how they judge a business online. The 2026 edition is the clearest data available on why a website, specifically an owned, Australian-registered website, still counts for something a social media page does not.

80% of Australians say they trust a business more if it runs a .au website. 51% say they will only buy from a business that has one. 46% say they check a .au website first when they are ready to buy something, ahead of checking a marketplace listing or a social profile. On the business side, seven in ten Australian small businesses already use .au as their primary domain, and 82% chose .au specifically to signal that the business is Australian.

The domain count backs this up. More than 4.3 million .au domain names are now registered, roughly one for every six Australians, according to auDA’s own registry figures published around the .au namespace’s 40th anniversary in March 2026. That is a lot of businesses and individuals who have already decided an owned website is worth paying for every year, not just a free social profile.

Takeaway: 51% of Australians will only buy from a business with a .au website, a stronger figure than the 51% of businesses the ABS records as having any online presence at all.

What the Data Means If You Run an SMB

Line the two data sets up next to each other and the gap gets obvious fast. 51% of Australian businesses have some form of online presence, mostly through social media. 51% of Australian consumers will only buy from a business with a proper .au website. Those are two different groups, and a lot of Australian small businesses are sitting in the first without qualifying for the second.

That is not a reason to drop social media, it still reaches customers and it is genuinely free to start. It is a reason to treat a website as the base layer, with social media as one channel that points back to it, rather than the other way around. A Facebook page cannot show a customer your pricing, take a booking without a third-party app, or hold your reviews in a place you control. A website can do all three, and .au specifically carries a trust signal that a generic .com or a social profile does not.

For the 63.6% of Australian businesses running solo, the barrier is rarely interest, it is time and cost certainty. A fixed-price website build removes both. If you want a straight answer on what a proper site would cost for your business and how long it would take to launch, talk to RockingWeb about a build that fits a small business budget, not an enterprise one.

Sources

• Australian Bureau of Statistics, Characteristics of Australian Business, 2024-25 financial year (released 25 June 2026)
• Australian Bureau of Statistics, Counts of Australian Businesses, Including Entries and Exits, July 2021-June 2025 (released 16 December 2025)
• Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Number of small businesses in Australia (citing ABS Counts of Australian Business, Table 13, August 2025)
• auDA, Why .au? report, 2026
• auDA, 40 years of .au (March 2026 registry figures)