The Index / rules

Rules

This is a public auction for words. No ads, no API keys, no revenue share. You bid to stand above everyone else on a word. Rank is the bid — nothing else.

How bidding works

An open word costs $1. Taking a held word costs at least a dollar more than the standing bid. There is no ceiling below $999,999: you name your own price above that floor, and bidding well above it is how you make a word expensive for anyone else to take.

A single bid is whole dollars, from $1 to $999,999. A word already standing at $999,999 can still be taken, at $999,999.

If you are already top bid on a word, you can raise at any time and pay only the difference. Nobody can take your position by paying that difference.

If someone outbids you, your bid is spent and your listing comes down. That is the game.

A completed payment is what claims the bid. If someone else's payment lands first and the price moves, your payment is refunded in full.

What you can bid on

Words. Two to twenty letters, in the dictionary — 63,666 of them are available. Names, brands and invented words are not: nike is not a word, it's a name. apple is a fruit. Slurs and sexual terms are not available either.

What your listing may say

• Your display name, description and logo must be your own. You may not present yourself as a brand you are not, or imply an affiliation you do not have.
• The domain you link to is shown next to your name, everywhere your name appears — on the board, in the feed and in a word's permanent history. A display name is whatever you type; the destination is not. Anyone reading a listing can see where it actually goes.
• A product website, or an X @handle.
• A logo, uploaded or linked. Either way we re-encode it to a square PNG and serve it ourselves, so it cannot break later when your own host changes. It must be at least 64×64 — below that it looks blurry on the board.
• Optionally: button text, an offer, one line for the board, and a longer pitch shown only on the word's own page. Any offer you publish is yours to honour — we do not check codes and will not arbitrate them.
• No chat or invite links — Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Signal and similar. This is for products and profiles, not group chats.
• No links to sexual content.
• Query parameters are stripped. Affiliate, referral and tracking URLs will not work.
• Link shortener URLs are replaced by the URL they redirect to.

Disputes

If a listing on a word is presenting itself as your brand, file at /disputes. It comes down, the bidder is refunded in full, and we keep nothing.

If someone is top bid on a word you also use as a brand, but is clearly advertising their own product, the listing stands. That is lawful comparative advertising and it works the same way on every ad network. You are welcome to outbid them on the same terms as anyone else.

Every decision we make is published.

After you pay

Your listing is public. Clicks go to the URL you submitted, without query parameters, and the click count is shown on the board for everyone to see.