I am not sure I quite understand what Nick means by ‘fare better’ with a
distinct URL... in what way? I guess by getting more traffic
than one that doesn’t? How can this be measured?
I believe that a website which sits on a local government server is likely
to be more frequently indexed by search engines regardless of domain name,
and certainly better than one residing elsewhere. At Hampshire County
Council we have ‘museums’ content which sits under the corporate
hants.gov.uk domain. Provided it starts www.hants.gov.uk I can select what
comes next.
We have one museum with its own URL chosen, a number of years ago, to give
it a distinct marketing identity. Our current policy is not to build any
websites with their own domains but if appropriate to allow a ‘marketing-
led’ domain to alias to the corporate address. This allows more memorable
URLs which look better on leaflets and posters, but I doubt we will be
producing any such web addresses in the future. We have not gone down the
dot.museum path.
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