The pro-domain is an exclusive domain. Only if you are a lawyer,
medical doctor,accountant(cpa) or engineer,you are entitled to get a pro-domain. Other liberal professions will be perhaps later in the position, also to order a
pro-domain. A self certification that you belong to one of these groups is necessary.
When .Pro launches on June 1 2004, addresses in the form "yourname.pro" will now be available to any registrant satisfying the requirements for a corresponding law.pro, med.pro or cpa.pro Internet address. Approval for second-level domain was granted to the .Pro registry during the recent ICANN Board meeting in Tunisia. Lawyers, Doctors and Accountants can now have a short memorable pro-domain name.
"We think, that .Pro becomes a more attractive domain for professionals now that they can get a
pro-domain such as'generalhospital.pro' in addition to 'generalhospital.med.pro'," says Hans-Peter Oswald,
CEO of ICANN and Registrypro accredited registrar SECURA.
In order to register a domain at .pro, you must register also a domain at least at two
of the subdomain -
cpa.pro, law.pro, eng.pro, bar.pro,aca.pro or med.pro. In other words: You can get only
gneralhospital.pro, if you also register generalhosptital.med.pro and generalhospital.law.pro.
What is .pro?
Professionals spend years in school to further their education, years in training and preparation to pass
strict exams and finally achieve a license to practice in their field of specialty. Along with maintaining
their image and credibility, a professional must earn the trust of his/her client. This is easy to establish in
person, but difficult to convey over the Internet. In the physical world - professionals and their clients can
have private and confidential discussions, face to face or telephonically. To ensure trust online and conduct
business with propriety, communications and transactions must remain private and secure. RegistryPro offers
a way to solve this challenge with the new Top Level Domain (TLD) extension .
The .Pro TLD will offer professionals a distinctive presence on the Internet. Unlike other more common domain names,
such as .com and .net, RegistryPro's .Pro names will be uniquely valuable since they will be available only to
professionals who self certify that they meet the eligibility requirements.
The ProCert Certificate is based on the self certification of the customer and an individual check of each applicant by the Registrar, who uses databases and records for this check.
Additionally, RegistryPro will offer
profession specific domain strings, such as .law.pro,eng.pro, bar,pro, jur.pro,
aca.pro .med.pro and .cpa.pro allowing the online community to
immediately identify the professional field they seek.
Professional integrity is important to you and so is providing confidential communication to your clients and
or patients. The .Pro bundle, which includes the .ProCert professional level digital certificate,
offers you a solution for identifying yourself as a concerned professional who takes electronic security seriously.
.Pro provides the efficiency of the digital economy with the security to support it.
.Pro is unlike any other domain name extension to date. It is exclusively available to professionals who certify that they meet the requirements of their profession and provide eligibility information with their registration. To facilitate private and confidential communications, .Pro will be the first registry to bundle a digital certificate with every domain name, which will provide the ability to send encrypted and non-repudiated email. Other security services such as time-stamping and electronic notarization are also possible.
The .Pro product includes a web address for the following professions:
(johnsmith.med.pro) or
(johnsmith.law.pro) or
(johnsmith.cpa.pro) or
(johnsmith.eng.pro) or
(johnsmith.aca.pro) or
(hansmueller.jur.pro) or
(tonyblair.bar.pro) and
a digital certificate to enable secure communications
A validation process cross-verifies the registrant's self-certified personal identity and professional information against appropriate licensing databases (i.e. state, or jurisdiction specific). Other services will be available and provided through the Registrar such as website design, web hosting, email and more.
What are the basic eligibility criteria?
Generally, to be in compliance with the professional eligibility requirements, a registrant must be either:
1. An individual who is currently licensed as
a Certified Public Accountant,
a physician
(including a medical doctor)
an attorney at law
engineer
or,
2. An organization, that provides accounting, legal,medical or engineering professional services, and has an employee who satisfies one of the above criteria and registers on behalf of such entity or organization. Examples of such organizations include: accounting firms, hospitals, legal publishers, medical supply companies, or even the law department of a large company.
You do not buy just a domain, if you register .pro domain, you get a certified domain which constitutes your
digital identity at the net. The pro-domain will cost 225 US-Dollars per domain/year. You will have to pay per year
and domain a verification fee of 100 US-Dollars. You self certify with the registration that you are a doctor, lawyer
or accountant or that your organization/company employees at least one medical doctor,
lawyer, engineer or accountant. We will
check your self certification by public data bases and records. Persons or institutions with wrong self certifications have according
to the ICANN rules no right
to a refund of the Verification Service Fee, as this fee pays is also used for the verification costs in the cases with negative
results.
Improve your ranking at Google by .pro
Seach engines like Google rank your listing higher if a keyword from a search is in your domain name. You can get these names with .pro, when they are not available in .com.
Listen to what the Internet "gurus" have to say about what names to buy:
"As we've frequently reported in our SE Book & Newsletter, placing keywords right in your domain name can give your site a major boost on search engines. We've also reported that some engines are no longer accepting sub-directory pages. This is one of the reasons the smart marketing pros have been buying keyword-phrase domain names. They use them as doorway pages to boost traffic to their sites." says Stephen Mahaney, author of The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars.
Michael Campbell points out, in Nothing But 'Net, "The reason we want keywords in the domain name is that search engines often get 'tuned' to find, and give better positioning to, domain with keywords in them."
Declan Dunn, author of Winning the Affiliate Game, sent out a memo to his affiliates advising "To get on top of the search engines, one of the critical keys is a good domain name LOADED with keywords." Declan goes on to say "This news is spreading among WebMasters, SearchEngine Meisters, Internet marketers, and big corporations. Don't wait."
Only in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany
The registrations of pro-domain is available only for
doctors, accountants, engineers and lawyers in the
US, Canada, United Kingdom and Germany. Others countries will follow soon.
You can only participate at the pre-registration if you give us your credit card data.
The connection is secured (use
https://www.domainregistry.de/pro.html).
We will only charge your card after a successful registration. The pre-registration is free of charge, except the Verification service
fee in cases, when the eligibility criterias are not met.
Comments of the press:
Yahoo News
Lycos News
If you do not want to wait:
You can register immediately and without any restrictions md-domain. The md-domain is considered in the US
as the domain for medical professions.Price: 200 US-Dollar per year.