In this sample, a lawyer directory appears in the top 10 of more than half of legal searches on Google, and videos appear far more often in Spanish searches. Across 2,240 legal searches, a lawyer directory ranked in the top 10 for 64.2% of them, People Also Ask appeared for 95.8% and a video for 11.3%.
The question this answers: where can a law firm page rank for the searches clients type, and where do directories, videos and forums hold the first page instead?
Spanish legal searches showed a video in the top 10 for 30.5% of 249 searches, against 8.8% of 1,991 English searches. Directories were most often in the top 10 for criminal defense searches (85.4% of 137) and least often for disability benefits searches (40.0% of 55). The 10 most frequent websites held 21.5% of the 22,089 top-10 results.
English and Spanish legal searches
| Group | Searches (N) | Directory in top 10 | People Also Ask | Video in top 10 | Top-10 results that are directories |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All legal searches | 2,240 | 64.2% | 95.8% | 11.3% | 10.7% |
| English searches | 1,991 | 62.9% | 95.9% | 8.8% | 10.7% |
| Spanish searches | 249 | 74.3% | 95.2% | 30.5% | 10.5% |
By practice area
| Group | Searches (N) | Directory in top 10 | People Also Ask | Video in top 10 | Top-10 results that are directories |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family law | 246 | 74.8% | 97.6% | 4.1% | 11.9% |
| Personal injury | 203 | 56.7% | 98.0% | 9.9% | 8.9% |
| Immigration | 189 | 60.3% | 98.4% | 11.1% | 9.8% |
| Criminal defense | 137 | 85.4% | 97.1% | 13.1% | 17.0% |
| Estate planning and probate | 131 | 51.9% | 98.5% | 13.7% | 8.1% |
| Legal aid and free help | 123 | 46.3% | 94.3% | 1.6% | 6.1% |
| Real estate and business | 98 | 76.5% | 90.8% | 4.1% | 15.1% |
| Disability benefits | 55 | 40.0% | 100.0% | 7.3% | 6.6% |
| Medical malpractice | 48 | 81.3% | 97.9% | 0.0% | 14.0% |
| Employment | 46 | 78.3% | 91.3% | 6.5% | 13.0% |
By type of search
| Group | Searches (N) | Directory in top 10 | People Also Ask | Video in top 10 | Top-10 results that are directories |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost searches | 449 | 61.0% | 97.1% | 10.0% | 8.2% |
| How-to and what-to-do searches | 238 | 60.1% | 98.7% | 22.7% | 9.8% |
| Searches that name a city or state | 204 | 68.1% | 94.1% | 6.9% | 12.2% |
| “Best” searches | 154 | 91.6% | 96.8% | 7.8% | 21.1% |
| “Near me” searches | 117 | 85.5% | 97.4% | 3.4% | 16.1% |
Which directories show up
| Group | Searches (N) | FindLaw | Justia | Avvo | Super Lawyers | Two or more directories | Directories per top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All legal searches | 2,240 | 5.0% | 34.4% | 12.0% | 22.1% | 30.6% | 1.1 |
| Family law | 246 | 5.3% | 51.6% | 8.5% | 30.1% | 36.2% | 1.2 |
| Personal injury | 203 | 3.9% | 22.7% | 9.4% | 35.0% | 25.6% | 0.9 |
| Immigration | 189 | 0.5% | 42.3% | 9.5% | 19.6% | 30.2% | 1.0 |
| Criminal defense | 137 | 2.9% | 54.7% | 21.2% | 46.7% | 56.9% | 1.7 |
| Estate planning and probate | 131 | 6.9% | 28.2% | 14.5% | 18.3% | 23.7% | 0.8 |
| Legal aid and free help | 123 | 9.8% | 32.5% | 4.1% | 4.9% | 13.0% | 0.6 |
| Real estate and business | 98 | 3.1% | 58.2% | 9.2% | 44.9% | 54.1% | 1.5 |
| Disability benefits | 55 | 1.8% | 36.4% | 1.8% | 20.0% | 21.8% | 0.7 |
| Medical malpractice | 48 | 0.0% | 56.3% | 16.7% | 35.4% | 43.8% | 1.4 |
| Employment | 46 | 4.3% | 47.8% | 6.5% | 39.1% | 37.0% | 1.3 |
Who holds the top 10
| Group | Searches (N) | Lawyer directories | Sites named for law, lawyer or legal | Video and social | Reference, media and legal-information sites | Government and schools | All other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All legal searches | 2,240 | 10.7% | 36.7% | 12.0% | 2.3% | 8.4% | 29.9% |
| English searches | 1,991 | 10.7% | 36.1% | 12.2% | 2.6% | 8.2% | 30.2% |
| Spanish searches | 249 | 10.5% | 40.9% | 10.8% | 0.1% | 10.3% | 27.4% |
| Family law | 246 | 11.9% | 47.8% | 10.1% | 1.1% | 6.6% | 22.5% |
| Personal injury | 203 | 8.9% | 45.4% | 7.9% | 1.6% | 2.6% | 33.7% |
| Immigration | 189 | 9.8% | 35.9% | 12.2% | 1.8% | 11.1% | 29.3% |
| Criminal defense | 137 | 17.0% | 42.9% | 12.6% | 3.1% | 3.3% | 21.1% |
| Estate planning and probate | 131 | 8.1% | 41.6% | 12.7% | 1.9% | 3.3% | 32.5% |
| Legal aid and free help | 123 | 6.1% | 33.5% | 5.7% | 1.0% | 21.7% | 32.0% |
| Real estate and business | 98 | 15.1% | 36.6% | 12.0% | 3.7% | 5.3% | 27.4% |
| Disability benefits | 55 | 6.6% | 31.1% | 15.5% | 1.8% | 7.9% | 37.1% |
| Medical malpractice | 48 | 14.0% | 40.0% | 5.5% | 2.5% | 2.3% | 35.7% |
| Employment | 46 | 13.0% | 46.4% | 4.2% | 0.7% | 2.0% | 33.8% |
How concentrated the top 10 is
| Group | Searches (N) | Different websites | Held by the 10 most frequent | Held by the 100 most frequent | Websites seen for one search only |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All legal searches | 2,240 | 6,612 | 21.5% | 40.3% | 61.2% |
| English searches | 1,991 | 6,230 | 22.6% | 39.5% | 61.7% |
| Spanish searches | 249 | 664 | 32.1% | 66.5% | 62.0% |
| Family law | 246 | 1,060 | 23.5% | 46.2% | 66.3% |
| Personal injury | 203 | 916 | 19.9% | 46.3% | 67.8% |
| Immigration | 189 | 653 | 26.2% | 60.8% | 63.2% |
| Criminal defense | 137 | 657 | 27.6% | 52.0% | 71.2% |
| Estate planning and probate | 131 | 529 | 25.1% | 60.5% | 66.5% |
| Legal aid and free help | 123 | 424 | 24.3% | 65.6% | 55.4% |
| Real estate and business | 98 | 511 | 27.4% | 53.7% | 73.2% |
| Disability benefits | 55 | 217 | 35.3% | 78.6% | 64.1% |
| Medical malpractice | 48 | 254 | 25.2% | 67.4% | 66.1% |
| Employment | 46 | 250 | 24.1% | 66.9% | 73.6% |
Directories, video and reference sites that recur
| Group | Searches with the site in the top 10 |
|---|---|
| reddit.com | 37.5% |
| justia.com | 34.4% |
| superlawyers.com | 22.1% |
| facebook.com | 20.4% |
| quora.com | 19.4% |
| avvo.com | 12.0% |
| youtube.com | 10.6% |
| abogado.com | 7.8% |
| law.cornell.edu | 6.0% |
| findlaw.com | 5.0% |
| bestlawyers.com | 4.6% |
| yelp.com | 4.3% |
| lawinfo.com | 3.3% |
| nolo.com | 3.3% |
| wikipedia.org | 2.8% |
What does this mean for your firm?
- Where directories fill the first page, list and also publish. In practice areas where a directory is in the top 10 for most searches, a firm page competes with the directory for the same first page, so a complete directory profile and a page of your own both matter.
- Where videos appear, a video can be the way in. Spanish-language searches show a video far more often, so a short Spanish video beside the page is worth planning.
- Read concentration with care. Many websites appear for one search only. That suggests, but does not prove, that many first pages are not held by the same few sites; the tables show the measured shares.
How was this made?
We saved the Google top-10 results for legal searches in the United States on 2026-10-29 and 30, kept the searches of people looking for a lawyer or legal help, and kept a search only if every word in it is a common English or Spanish word, a legal or marketing term, or a US place name from our own datasets, with no first name, brand, news or celebrity term, and we dropped searches made from the lawyer’s or the firm’s side (marketing, AI tools, careers, pay, templates, logos, gifts), most trivia and definitions, and searches with fewer than eight organic results (searches that name a firm, a lawyer or a brand are dropped; a second script re-checks every kept search). The searches are Probative’s own set of legal search phrases, not weighted by how often each is searched. Each result is classed by website with a fixed list. A second script recomputes every figure from the same file, and 20 random rows were checked against the saved results by hand. A lawyer directory is a website whose main product is a list or rating of lawyers: abogado.com, abogados.com, attorneys.com, avvo.com, bestlawfirms.com, bestlawyers.com, blacklawyers.com, caselaw.findlaw.com, elabogado.com, federal-lawyer.com, findlaw.com, hg.org, justia.com, latinlawyers.com, lawfirms.com, lawinfo.com, lawyer.com, lawyerlegion.com, lawyerment.com, lawyers.com, lawyersearch.com, legalmatch.com, martindale.com, primerus.com, superlawyers.com, topattorneyjournal.com, toplawyersusa.com, uslawyersinfo.com, wikilawyer.com. Legal-information, marketplace and business-listing sites (angi.com, bbb.org, birdeye.com, chamberofcommerce.com, clio.com, expertise.com, findacase.com, lawrina.com, lawsuit-information-center.com, legalzoom.com, manta.com, mapquest.com, nolo.com, porch.com, rocketlawyer.com, thumbtack.com, upcounsel.com, usnews.com, yellowpages.com, yelp.com) are counted with reference and media sites, not as lawyer directories. Download the data page, the CSV or the JSON below.
Download and cite
- CSV and JSON, free under CC BY 4.0 with credit to Probative Growth.
- The same rows as a dataset: Google search landscape for legal searches.