Lawyer versus Attorney... does it matter?

[RobertFisher]

Having worked with quite a few firms and large partnerships I have always wondered a bit about how Google or Bing approach terms like attorney or lawyer, attorneys or lawyers. Having done a lot of KWA analysis I can tell you that in some states you will have a preference for one over the other and it is rather fluid. Even when you get into specific disciplines within the law, you will see searchers favor one over the other. So, for an example you might see in Texas that divorce attorney is searched more frequently than divorce lawyer but Criminal lawyer is more prevalent over criminal attorney.

Does anyone know if search engines look at attorney and lawyer as interchangeable such that if you build a page and only use lawyer you would still be able to rank as attorney, etc? I have my opinions based on experience but just thought it would be cool to hear from others.

Thanks

[BradsDeals]

When I search for "personal injury attorney" there are plenty of results that pop up that are clearly optimized for "lawyer." I'd say yes, Google clearly has connected the dots on that one.

[GlobeRunner]

Google does, in fact, know that lawyers are attorneys and attorneys are lawyers. However, you'll notice that Google's search results don't reflect this. You'll see different results for lawyer phrases versus attorney keywords. When optimizing, you'll want to make sure you've done your keyword research and mention those keywords appropriately on the site.