Is The URL Going Away?
Recently I’ve been noticing an interesting trend. I’ve been seeing more and more entities (people, companies, movements) give out a Google “keyword” instead of a URL. For example, the Ron Paul campaign has a lot of placards that just say “Google Ron Paul” instead of just giving a website address (ie www.ronpaul2008.com).
Apparently companies in Asia have been doing this for a while now. I’m not sure if this is because of the difficulty of acquiring meaningful domain names, or if the subject is just easier to remember.
This means a couple things (to me). One is that while I don’t think premium domain names are going away anytime soon, they may definitely become less important. The other is that namespace crowding is going to be come much more of a problem.
What I mean by namespace crowding is the the inability to control how you rank in your search results. If you are the poor guy who owns Bill Gates Windows and Door Installation, you are never ever going to be able to Google that and be anywhere near the top of the search pile. A unique URL is the only choice at this point.
Your ownership of this phrase becomes even more important. Non-related pages or bad pages become much more of a problem, and one that is sort of out of your control. If the folks at boingboing decide that they want to write a post saying “Sean Lavelle is a tool” that is going to crush whatever Google ranking I have built up. That is sort of an extreme example (Cory, Mark, David and Xeni don’t do it! Please! 
) but you can see who this lack of control would give someone who is invested in a particular brand fits.
What this means for me right now is that I am still pursuing a domain name that I want, but keeping an eye on how Google (and other search engines see me) is a very important part of maintaining your brand.
So go ahead - Google “Sean E Lavelle”
