I didnt even know there was a .pro extension.

Pretty cool. Got some ideas but I searched and see that you need to verify your business license with them in order to get it.

So not really a spur of the moment buy if you know what I mean.

I am not an SEO guy, so I dont know if it has advantages in that regards.

But one advantage might be that you get some credibility from the .pro extension.

I dont know. But cool anyway, thanks for starting the thread, I probably would never of known about it otherwise!

A .pro domain would be quite hard to get.

Registrants are required to self-certify their professional status and agree to terms of use before registration, then subsequently provide detailed license information. Background checks are then completed by the Registrar prior to the domain being activated.

Plus there aren't that many domain registrars that where you can register a .pro domain.

A .pro may be the so called pro's choice but I would go for the .com every day! My .com domains do the trick for me because at the moment when people go online searching for products or services they assume that the .com is the real deal! I belive it will be the case for a log time to come...

I'd personally never heard of the TLD until now, and I don't believe I've ever seen any of them show up in the SERPs.

I wouldn't for a second believe that's due to any inherent SEO disadvantages, however. It's probably down to the fact that (a) I haven't performed many searches for "professional services" of the type that might be associated with such domains; (b) according to Wikipedia the number of registrations only surpassed 100k in 2011 with quite a high proportion being used in non-English speaking countries; and (c) they're not very widely known about and/or used even by firms/individuals involved in the provision of relevant services.

I suppose an inherent advantage is that registrants have to adduce specific documentation/certification/information pertaining to their professional status and are then subject to validatory background checks by the registry before their domain's activated. So at least one knows, to some degree, that whoever's "behind the domain" is legitimate insofar as they're authorised, accredited or licensed by an official body.

This could add weight to the authority of your site and/or the information contained within it, but that only really means something to people who are "in the know", I guess? And I'd wager a guess that not many people will currently know this, as so few people even know of the TLD to begin with. And one wonders just how strict this "validation" really is.

Still, if you can register some very desirable names, why not? The only consideration is that because of restrictions over who can be the registrant of such domains, so too would your pool of potential buyers be necessarily limited if/when attempting to sell them at a later date?

I used a .pro domain many years ago.

It only had one "advantage": It was way more expensive than the rest.

dont think for the life of me have landed on a .pro website before. didnt even know it existed :-)