> Cereal and Washing Power can
> appear as index terms on signs in a supermarket

Even this needs to be thought through carefully to when carrying the analogy
to the internet, and avoid another common dot-com mistake.

From the beginning of web time it has been immediately obvious to all and
sundry that the web is ideally suited for building indexes, starting with a
simple list of URLs.

This led to a gazillion people saying "I'm going to build a site (called
'hub', 'portal', etc - choose your jargon of preference) for this group"
(town, industry, sport, religion, etc - chose your group of preference).

And that all contributed to the demand for generic names:

"Gee, if I could just get 'car.com', I'd be able to build 'the' index for
the car industry, and everyone would come to my site".  This is particularly
true of geographic names - "gee, if I get 'wagga.com.au' I'd be able to
build 'the' index for Wagga".

Unfortunately, the gazillions of people all trying to do this didn't think
through the issues carefully - they didn't think thru:

* the barrier to entry issue
* the availability of equally effective names issue

Since the internet has low barriers to entry, and since there are always
similar domain names almost equally effective the end result is that every
group has half a dozen competing indexes.  umm, hubs, err, portals.

e.g. if 'something' is the generic name you're after, then the following
competing variants are almost equally useful:

 something.com.au
 somethingonline.com.au
 somethingnet.com.au
 somethingon-line.com.au
 somethingindex.com.au
 somethingonthenet.com.au
 somethinghub.com.au
 somethingaustralia.com.au
 somethingoz.com.au

If you replace 'something' in these domain names above with your favourite
generic word (cars, clubs, hotels, etc) you'll soon recognise that indeed is
what has happened on the internet today.

If the end result is multiple indexes to any group, then having the generic
name isn't really of value.  For example, suppose you want to go on holiday
to Town X.  There are multiple indexes in existence for that town - which
are you going to use??  You're going to look for an index that has form of
external legitimacy - in the case of tourism, that's conferred by the local
council or tourist bureau.  The index run by the tourist authority is in the
long run the one that most people will be more comfortable using -
regardless of its domain name.

Trust is an issue both on and off the net - as a factor in choosing between
competing indexes, it outweighs having a generic name.

To pick up on Bruce's original comment, he decides what supermarket to go to
based on its brand (that's a matter of trust).  While there he may use its
index to find the cereal.  Once he's done that, he buys a brand.  The
internet analogy is going to a domain name that is a brand you trust (e.g.
amazon.com), then putting a generic term into their search index (e.g.
'thrillers') then buying a specific book.



Regards, Mark

Mark Hughes
Effective Business Applications Pty Ltd
effectivebusiness§pplications.com.au
www.pplications.com.au
+61 4 1374 3959