20081220175619: What is an organization's desirable number and use of domain names?

20081220175700: Multiple public top-level domain names for essentially the same org? -Bad!

1. 20081220180019: For instance,
   
1. 20081220183549: *Zoho with about 20 domains of the form Zoho<Product>.com (as Zoho(CRM|Projects|Writer|Sheet|...).com for their different products.
2. 20081220183606: *Dating sites which register separate domains for each city, race, and/or other criteria, for instance
1. 20081220183619: ** PasadenaSingles.com, LAOver40Singles.com, and more (see Google Search["Quickly Meet Quality & Serious" Singles]) , which all (falsely) appear to be unique to that city & demographic but are in fact just a template and likely the same database.
2. 20081220184047: Why:
1. 20081220184258: To give the org more more market share as PasadenaSingles.com example (one org appearing as multiple thru falsified specialization in each area) 
   
2. 20081220184339: To make the org look bigger as perhaps Zoho example.
3. 20081220185621: Why not:
1. 20081220185722: Dishonest advertizing (Falsely makes the organization seem bigger or multiple) without good argument for this that I can see (other than greed)
2. 20081220185858: Creates notable confusion & comparison exaustion (looks like there are many times more choices than their really is)
3. 20081220192432: Certainly was not the original intent/design behind the Domain Name System, creating these problems and likey more:
1. 20081220190055: If the domains are known to be of the same owner (as Zoho example),
   creates a security risk.  Including:
1. 20081220190718: Easy phishing! (trojan horse): Anyone could register a site as ZohoClients.com (which appears to be a legitmate as indeed it uses Zoho's naming convention Zoho is so promoting but it's not legit), so the unsuspecting user could then trust this to be Zoho speaking to them, and easily give his/her information (as login!).  Does Zoho need to have such tojan horse sites be created before they realize their naming convention is a very bad idea?
2. 20081220194721: Software tools understandably somewhat weak: for such bulk domain management and especially for creating actually-identical websites hosted under lots of different top-level domain names.
   
3. 20081220192432: Might cause top-level domain name server overload with (in these cases) easily 20x the domin names
   (though domain name servers seem to be functioning okay,
   but possibly only because this practice isn't too common and/or every domain costs an annual fee which then helps pay these costs)
4. 20081220194000: ~20x or more the domain registration and management costs.  That could easily be prohibitive to the small org, though sadly some larger orgs might view it as cheap (dishonest) advertizing)
   
5. 20081220191051: As is sometimes sadly intentional, often not clear what the parent org is.   What is the parent org of that PasadenaSingles.com . It's seemingly not Singles.com perhaps because that name was already taken (by somone doing a review of websites) or perhaps because they (wrongfully) didn't want to be found.
6. 20081220191750: Some of the domain name extensions may already be taken, most especially if the root name is very generic (not Zoho but definitely Singles (as it was).  Certainly such simple domain-name concatenations are never guaranteed to be available (whereas if done with "." nor "/" they are)
   
7. 20081220200148: Though I'm not certain, it seems the leading respectable organizations don't do this.  As though there are probably some bigger organizations doing this which we we don't see (possibly because they are doing this), it doesn't seem they are sizeable.
1. 20081220200639: Google does Groups.Google.com , AdSense.Google.com, etc.  The only exception is gmail.com and this is understandable.
2. 20081220202242: this practice is common in certain industries:
1. 20081220200957: In the the sale of domain names,
   
1. 20081220202056: GoDaddy has a sub-service WildWestDomains allowing the creation of infinite websites which are essentially the same store, and (because of this??) WildWestDomains is not just the largest domain register, but 5x larger than any other;
   
2. 20081220202214: and even a level deeper, iDirect even creates software LogicBoxes to create infinite such services to create infinite such websites.  However, this is in the sales of domain.
2. 20081220202524: In dating sites (likely): as PasadenaSingles.com example
   
4. 20081220202838: but this doesn't mean it would work elsewhere, and even if it does:
5. 20081220202303: and this doesn't mean it's appropriate in other industries (nor even these industries!)
4. 20081220184146: Recommendations:
1. 20081220184743: "Bad" says MBParker.  Despite the merits, it's still misleading, wasteful, and a potential security risk.
   

20081220095945: Minimum practical domain names per org: Good! (under construction)

1. 20081220101620: One primary domain name. 
   
1. 20081220101637: If the organization X is a clear sub of an existing organization Y with domain YD, then there are two key possibilities
   
1. 20081220101727: an automatically-parsed composite name: it could have the domain name X.YD (a subdomain) else path YD/X/ (a subpath).  For instance, Docs.Google.com , Groups.Google.com,  etc.  Usually this has notable advantages:
2. 
   
3. 20081220101836: a human made unique name, either obvious combo (Gmail for Mail.Google.com) or or other unique brand name (as Datapilot for  Susteen DataPilot) @@to be continued.  unless that name as (as Mail.Google.com) is too long for its unusually high use so a unique primary domain name can be made (as Gmail.com)
   
2. X.YD or YD/X is too long or there is a chance if the name X is unique enough in itself and , then 
   
3. @to be continued.
   
2.