Domain Extensions

[Millermore]

I wanted to get everyone's thoughts on the new domain extensions that are now available. I'm considering buying a couple .lawyer and .attorney domains for clients. I noticed when I tried to buy these I was asked for verification if we're going to be offering legal services through the site. That led me to think that it may be possible in the future that with this verification, if it's required, that means that not just anybody can have these domain names. That leads me to think that it's possible that these domains may benefit from users searching for terms with "lawyer" or "attorney" in their search term. I haven't seen anything in terms of these domain extensions and SEO yet, but I'd like to know your thoughts as to how these will be treated in the future. I can imagine these will be more valuable than the old .net, .us, .info, etc., domains.

[LesleyPaone]

There has been a lot of discussion about the different extensions lately, here are two that I have been in on

http://moz.com/community/q/i-have-to-change-my-site-s-name-and-domain-is-using-ninja-going-to-be-a-huge-pitfall

http://moz.com/community/q/london-and-long-terms-value-of-tlds

Personally I would not launch a site with them, it is unclear how search engines are going to handle them. There is too much user training to get them to use them currently as well. Buying them, for the cheap cost and the insurance of having them, sure, why not. But I would not do much with them. Maybe a static site with a contact form for the time being.