I happened to see a news story promoting the Zippin Pippin, which is a roller coaster the City Of Green Bay has purchased and is spending around $3 Million bucks to put in our local amusement park. In the news story, there was an image that showed a sign that also included the domain name ZippinPippin.org to further promote the ride. (the way they have it on the sign is hard to read… www.zippinpippin.org, ZippinPippin.org is the way I would list it 
After visiting the "site" ZippinPippin.org I noticed right off the bat that the domain name was using "Masking" with the redirect it was doing! Masking is useless in so many ways it’s crazy. A simple 301 redirect is more acceptable IMO than doing a forward with masking. What is domain masking? It is when the domain name does a forward (redirect) to another URL, but instead of changing to the forwarding URL, the domain name that is "masked" stays in the URL bar.
The reason I dislike masking is because it "hides" the actual URL of the site it forwards to no matter if you click on a different page on the site. If somebody wanted to link to a specific page with a masking… good luck because the masking doesn’t change the URL in the address bar.
One way to see if a domain name is masked is to watch your lower toolbar in your browser. Simply hoover over a link on the site and you will notice the change in the lower address bar. Click on a link and you will notice the URL in the upper address bar in web browser doesn’t change.
To me, masking is shady… almost like you are trying to "hide something".
Domain forwarding is good for brand protection or sending existing traffic to a domain name to your main site but beyond that, the domain name is not doing you any good in search engines. With direct navigation as one source of traffic, links is another and one important source of links to a domain name / website is via search engines like Google.com . If somebody is interested to get more information on the Zippin Pippin ride, they are likely to search Zippin Pippin at Google. Owning and developing a website on the matching domain like ZippinPippin.org will very likely return your site at or near the very top of Google with relevant content to the domain name after a little bit of time.
Doing a forward (redirect) does you little to no good in the search engines for the domain! You are wasting one of the powers of domain names by not building at least a minisite on the domain name!
It is very important for brand protection to own the exact matching domain like ZippinPippin.org and even the .com, so the city was right in doing that. Doing a "forward" to a page on the city’s website is OK but it doesn’t get the most out of owning the domain name! For an example, let’s say the main site for the city is ranked # 1 already in the search engine for the search term Zippin Pippin. Why not have the first and second positions with getting ZippinPippin.org ranking 2. Then you are two times more likely to provide the information somebody is looking for at YOUR SITE on the search engine! Well, the city doesn’t rank 1 and 2 but they could! Easily #1 if they developed ZippinPippin.org into at least a minisite with info about the roller coaster. Even the page the domain forwards to at posting has no information about the Zippin Pippin!
I could do a site in 30 minutes that cost nothing more than my 30 minutes! So "cost" really isn’t an issue here IMO because the city very likely has a web development person on staff. It is a little upsetting to me to see the domain name under used and promoting and forwarding the domain with masking.
Bay Beach
How about the amusement park the multi-million dollar project is going into? Bay Beach. The city owns BayBeach.org but once again forwards that domain name with masking (covering my eyes). Since the domain is simply redirecting, once again, for those "searching" for bay beach are not going to find the BayBeach.org site in the natural search rankings. This is another time the city very well could rank 1 & 2, if not more! A case of under using the domain asset they own and are paying for.
Interestingly enough.. the city just so happens to be promoting a domain name they do not even own in the meta description area of the city’s site that ranks for the Bay Beach search term. (covering my eyes again)
In the meta description for the city’s website that ranks 1st, you will notice in the above 1st highlighted yellow area how they put BayBeach.com . They own BayBeach.org and not BayBeach.com.
The second highlighted box displaying BayBeach.org for the Google Places results, is a good thing. Clicking on that forwards, with masking to BayBeach.org but the real URL is http://www.ci.green-bay.wi.us/BayBeach/index.html . That page is basically the "Home Page" for Bay Beach Amusement Park as it resides on the main website the city uses. Again, the redirect is fine, masking is questionable and really no reason for it IMO and the domain name BayBeach.org is being underused.
I understand having all things go to one main site, I just think having minisites for these attractions and matching domain names is a better idea. The page on the city’s site is fine but having another site directly on BayBeach.org is even better! It can help "own" the term in search engines with the domain itself ranking and the city’s page, as well as cover direct navigation and branding by owning the domain as they do.
According to DomainTools.com registrant search, the City Of Green Bay owns some 4,168 domain names? This tool isn’t always 100% accurate but it did grab my attention because that is a lot of domain names. I’m not sure that is correct or not but I’d be interested to know what they all own if that is the case. At about $10-$34.99 per year, per domain renewal prices I would hope they are putting these to good use.
I noticed several other things like no valid email address on file at the domain name registrar for the registrant (which can lead to unwanted domain name deletion by not getting domain renewal notification or domain name removal from the registry for invalid whois data) for BayBeach.org and ZippinPippin.org via DomainTools.com whois.
I did reach out via email wise to the city to offer some of this advice but I have yet to hear back at time of posting.
