By Michael Dorausch, D.C.
Dr. C. Ferguson from Ohio writes…
Just recently I read that a new “directory??” (is that what that is called?) “.pro” is or will be available soon and will be reserved for professionals like drs and lawyers. How soon will that be available? Would it be, then, wise just to use .pro if it is avail. soon, or better to stay with the better known/more common .com/ .net, etc?
Thanks for your questions Dr. Ferguson, this provides a good follow up to my recent domain name article. For your first question, what you referred to as a directory is actually known as an extension or a Top Level Domain (TLD). Some of the most common extensions or TLD’s include: .com, .net, .org, .info, as well as others. Among TLD’s, .com (dot com) is still most popular yet there are many different extensions available worldwide. For chiropractors in Canada, you may see the extension .ca, while D.C.’s in Great Britain often use the TLD .uk and chiropractors down under commonly use the extension (TLD) .au (for Australia) or .nz (for New Zealand). Several new top-level domains such as .biz and .info have been made available recently. You can view all the new TLD’s on the ICANN website (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) by clicking here.
The soon-to-be (I don’t know exactly how soon) top-level domain you mentioned .pro, is in fact expected to provide domain names exclusively for certified professionals, including lawyers and doctors. The .pro extension will hopefully (according to the folks behind it) allow consumers to make distinctions among professionals while increasing the volume of currently available domain names. From my current understanding of the .pro extension, I would expect a qualified medical doctor’s domain to read something like JamesTSmith.med.pro. If the extension were to be made available to chiropractors, one’s domain may look like JohnJTannenbaum.chiro.pro or maybe even JohnJTannenbaum.dc.pro. You can learn all about the .pro extension by visiting www.registrypro.com.
I don’t yet know what it will cost to register a .pro extension and I don’t know if they plan to make such extensions available to chiropractors. With that said, I believe there could be some good uses for a .pro extension but in my opinion, I would not wait until it becomes available. The ever so popular .com extension can be registered for about $15 (US) per year and as I have stated in a previous article, there are many .com domain names still available for chiropractors. Consider registering a .com domain name now, perhaps using your office name, and in the future you may be able to also register a domain name using the .pro extension.
Also, it is perfectly O.K. to have two (or more) website domains. Many hosts (including us) will “point” or “redirect” one domain to the other. For an example, visit www.palichiro.com and click on the word, “Welcome.” If you look in your browsers address bar, you’ll notice you are now on www.innatechiropractic.net rather than www.palichiro.com. This was a smart move by the chiropractor. Ask someone to spell “Innate Chiropractic” and you will likely get many variations. However, this DCs office is in the Pacific Palisades and “pali” is a common term used around town. It is so common that the local High School is known as “Pali High” (there are even huge red letters painted on the schools gymnasium wall using the term which happens to be a few blocks from the chiropractic office). See the word association here? It’s brilliant.
Why do I like the .com extension best? It’s been well branded. For example, thanks to the success of the .com TLD, I can often tell others to, “visit us online at Planet Chiropractic.” Most people know to simply type www.planetchiropractic.com even though I never mentioned the extension (I still always recommend you use the proper extension as well as the www prefix when inviting people to visit your website). Read the following aloud, “I get my books on Amazon” (I bet your mind said amazon.com).
If your extension ends in something other than .com it is critical that you mention it. For example, to visit the Life Chiropractic University web site you would need to type www.life.edu rather than www.life.com. If people cannot locate your website on the net it will be difficult to get your information to them.
Some chiropractors have asked me if it is okay for them to register .net or .org extensions for their Web sites. The answer to that is absolutely yes. However, I do not recommend it if the .com extension for the same name is available (for branding reasons mentioned above). To see an example of a D.C. using a .org extension in their domain you can visit www.drcunningham.org (we recently registered this domain and host the website for the doctor).
Hopefully this article has helped you to better understand the use of common website extensions a.k.a. top-level domains and how they relate to chiropractic web sites. If you have more questions or want to suggest a topic, e-mail me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to answer them here.
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