.pro TLD, thoughts?

[EveronSEO]

Hey all

Just a quick question, what are your thoughts on the .pro TLD? We are thinking of offering a live advice service online, and our guys are pretty hot on the subject matter. We can't seem to get the domain we want in terms of .com or .co.uk and are looking at .pro as it looks great next to our name and with our regional rep it screams professional, trusted advice.

We have read that .biz, .cc etc are normally associated with spam sites, so will .pro have a detrimental effect on our project idea?

Love to hear your thoughts!

J

[RichardSEO]

With the army of new TLD's coming out. We will have to see how much weight (or lack of) Google will place on them.

But from previous actions, the top TLDs .com/net/org will carry more weight than usual in terms of Exact or partial match domain.

[EveronSEO]

A very big competitor!

Helpouts isn't entirely free however, users have to pay per minute to receive advice and before this install a plugin to use Helpouts.

We would be using the live service as a more of an initial consultation to address the problem then referring the potential customer to our blog/content/guys in-house for further problem solving.

The domain we would be looking at is quite location specific as well, so we ideally want to be the area's resource point for problems in our trade.

J

[Linda-Vassily]

In general, I think a non-standard top level domain does not inspire as much trust in users as the standard ones but I do not have experience with .pro domains (probably because they are not common).

One thing I want to mention (though I imagine you are aware of this) is that Google itself  just rolled out a new service, called "Helpouts" which is a live advice service online. https://helpouts.google.com/home

Big competitor!