A museum could have its own address at .com or .org, but could present at the web the fine arts collection at .gallery. Sometimes museums could not register a short name at .com or .org, as these short names had been taken. The Gallery-Domains offer a second chance. Short, memorable domain names are essential for the marketing of websites and their content.
The .gallery domain names are cheaper than museum-domains, and they are unrestricted. Museums, which have not a non-profit status, are e.g. not eligible for Museum-Domains.
The new Gallery-Domains will be new, additional networks which museums can use to fish for additional visitors. The relationship between a better ranking in search engines and the Berlin-Domains has already been proven by a Study of Searchmetrics. Websites with Berlin-Domains often rank better in regional Google search queries than websites with .de domains and .com domains. The result of the Searchmetrics study can be summarized as follows:
"In 42% of search queries, .berlin domains have ranked better on a local level."
Another study by Total Websites in Houston shows that the results of the Searchmetrics study are practically transferable to all new top-level domains, which means also to the new Gallery-Domains. Total Websites states that Google considers the domain extensions of the new Top-level domains as an important criterion for the evaluation of a domain and therefore concludes that:
"It is clear that the new top-level domains improve the ranking in search engines."
Hans-Peter Oswald
http://www.domainregistry.de/... (English)
http://www.domainregistry.de/... (English)
http://www.domainregistry.de/... (German)
http://www.domainregistry.de/... (German)