.pro TLD audit hub
Restricted gTLD targeting credentialed professionals — lawyers, doctors, engineers and accountants.
The .pro TLD was approved in 2002 as a restricted namespace for accredited professionals, with original registration requirements that asked registrants to prove credentials in law, medicine or accountancy. Those restrictions were progressively loosened and effectively retired in 2015, after which .pro became open to any registrant. Adoption remains modest because the original credential-verification cohort never reached critical mass and the post-2015 unrestricted opening had to compete with a wave of newer gTLDs. We see .pro mostly on freelance professional portfolios, small consultancy brands and a smattering of niche directories. Pricing is in the higher mid-tier. The registry, operated by Afilias and now under Identity Digital, supports DNSSEC, registry lock and WHOIS privacy on parity with peer gTLDs. There is no measurable SEO bias for or against .pro; we treat it as a generic gTLD in audit scoring.