donuts logoHistorically .COM domains rank better in Google search than do other TLDs. There are a lot of theories behind this. As a drastic example, should an attorney’s .ASIA domain rank well in a city like Raleigh North Carolina? Probably not. Should a dentist use a .GOV domain? No.

What about the new .attorney and .lawyer domains?

Donuts.co runs several gTLD (generic Top Level Domains). Should attorneys get one of these domains? Should they have an EMD (exact math domain) such as RaleighPersonalInjury.com? Well, the domain is not nearly as important as the content that is on it.

Today I tried to purchase some of these new .attorney and .lawyer domains. It appears that many of the single and double letter domains are simply not available. An example of this would be A.Lawyer or An.Attorney. I then moved on to city names and “money keywords”. I found one I liked which was braininjury.attorney. I tried to go through GoDaddy’s checkout process and while they were processing my credit card I got a message saying that the domain was no longer available. What?! Did it become unavailable because I typed it in? Or was it not available in the first place? I am not sure. I called in to GoDaddy tech support and they informed me that Donuts.co is selling this themselves at a premium rate. This is unacceptable. I tried around 100 more domains and they were either not allowed or being sold as premium domains. My brain injury domain went from $35 to $4,999.99.

brain injury screenshot

Ummm, no. Maybe if that were an established, 3 year old domain with unique content on it that ranked well in search, but not for the name. Even $35 was pushing it.

Conclusion

I am left to conclude that .lawyer or .attorney may be ok for vanity, or a business card or a site that redirects people to a real .COM domain. John.Smith.attorney would be a neat URL, but then again it may confuse people since the average person is not aware of these gTLDs.

I don’t mean to shoot holes in donuts but a gTLD simply isn’t for me.

If you need assistance marketing your law firm check out my page on personal injury marketing.

Len

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