Custom Legal Marketing Data Shows 35% of Law Firms Are Optimizing for a Keyword Nobody Is Searching For

San Francisco, California – Law firm SEO and AEO company, Custom Legal Marketing, today released findings from a broadscale audit of U.S. law firm websites showing that 35% of firms publish a “Testimonials” page in their main navigation, even though Google search data shows no measurable consumer interest in the term. The study, conducted through the agency’s proprietary CLM Sequoia, AI marketing and research platform, analyzed 7,143 law firm websites ranking in the top organic positions across 288 U.S. cities and eight practice areas.

The audit found that “Testimonials” remains the most common social proof label across law firm websites, outranking “Reviews” by 32%. Across the dataset, 35% of firms publish a Testimonials nav page compared to 27% publishing a Reviews page. Google Trends data for 2025 showed the consumer search terms “lawyer reviews” and “law firm reviews” generating steady search interest throughout the year, while “lawyer testimonials” and “law firm testimonials” registered zero measurable interest for every week of the year.

The disconnect extends beyond navigation labels to URL structure. The full report on testimonials vs reviews found that 2,350 law firm domains route their social proof page through a “/testimonials/” URL path, while only 1,516 use a “/reviews/” path. Even among firms that updated their nav label to “Reviews” or “Client Reviews,” many left the underlying URL unchanged, leaving the indexed page address tied to the term consumers do not search for.

In a finding that captures the transition in motion, 563 firms in the audit publish both a “Testimonials” and a “Reviews” item in their main navigation as separate menu entries. More than half of those firms, 304 in total, point both menu items to the exact same URL.

Personal injury showed the widest gap between consumer language and on-site language, with 54.8% of personal injury firms publishing a Testimonials nav page compared to 27.6% publishing a Reviews page. Business law was the only practice area in the audit where Reviews appeared more frequently than Testimonials.

The full study, including methodology, practice area breakdowns, and a four-step migration sequence for firms changing from Testimonials to Reviews, is available on Custom Legal Marketing’s website.

Custom Legal Marketing is a law firm marketing agency built for how clients actually find lawyers today. Founded in 2005, CLM combines award-winning creative with a purpose-built AI platform to help law firms stand out, get chosen, and grow in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

Custom Legal Marketing
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https://custom.legal/
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