.guide Domain
Lead the Way With Expert Content
Register your .guide domain from just £34.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .guide domain?
The .guide domain positions your site as an authoritative resource. Travel guides, how-to websites, buying guides, and expert advisory services all benefit from a domain that says "I'll show you how". It's particularly strong for content sites that rank for informational search queries.
Who should register .guide?
Travel guide publishers, how-to content creators, buying guide websites, and expert advisory platforms.
Why choose .guide?
- Signals authoritative information
- Matches informational search queries
- Works for travel, tech, and consumer advice
- Positions you as the expert
Who runs .guide, and since when
Registry data from the .guide delegation record held by IANA, which maintains the internet's root zone. Eligibility comes from the registry's own policy, and the prices are ours.
- Extension type
- Generic (gTLD)
- Registry operator
- Binky Moon, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2014
- Delegated 8 May 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no editorial check and no documents to supply
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £34.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
What a .guide domain actually buys a publisher
On 23 March 2018 IANA recorded the transfer of the .academy contract and 195 others into one company: Binky Moon, LLC, which sits under Identity Digital. .guide was among those 195. That single line in the root zone database says more about the extension than any marketing page will, because it tells you what .guide is. Not a publishing project with an editorial board behind it, but one dictionary word in a very large portfolio, priced and administered alongside the rest.
None of that makes it a poor address. It does mean nothing is verified. No standard is applied to what you publish, no accreditation sits behind the word, and the claim in your domain is yours rather than the registry's. Readers work that out fast, which is why the sites that do well here are the ones whose content would have been trusted on any extension.
What buyers actually trip over is availability. Identity Digital blocks names three separate ways: the ICANN Specification 5 schedule of reserved names, the registry's own reserve and premium lists, and DPML, a service that lets a trademark holder block a string across the whole portfolio in a single purchase. Its help centre spells out how to tell them apart, including one trick worth knowing. Look up the same label followed by dpml.zone in WHOIS and you will see whether a trademark block is what stands in your way. A DPML block is not for sale, and chasing it changes nothing unless you hold the matching mark.
Is .guide the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.guide works well if
- The site really is a guide: a maintained reference on one subject, kept current, rather than a brochure with a blog bolted on the side.
- Your brand name followed by the word guide is the natural title, and burying it in a subfolder would hide the thing you are known for.
- You publish for readers in several countries, so a UK-specific extension would send a signal you do not want.
- The address has to survive being read out on a podcast or printed at the foot of a page. One common word, and almost nobody misspells it.
Look elsewhere if
- You expect the word in the extension to lift you in search. Google states in its own documentation that keywords in a top-level domain give no advantage or disadvantage.
- Most of your readers search from the UK. A .co.uk carries a country signal that .guide cannot, and costs roughly a third as much every year.
- The guide is one section of a bigger site. A folder on the domain you already own keeps the links and the authority in one place instead of splitting them across two.
Publishing for a UK audience and nowhere else? The .co.uk does more for local search and costs far less. See .co.uk pricing.
.guide vs .info: which should you register?
Both extensions are open to anyone and both are now administered by Identity Digital, so the choice is not about rules. It is about how specific you want the promise to be. .info entered the root zone on 26 June 2001 and means, roughly, that there is information here. .guide arrived in May 2014 and claims something narrower: that the site will take you through a subject in order.
.info is the cheaper option and the more familiar one to older readers, but two decades of registrations have thinned out the short names badly. .guide costs more and buys a word that describes the format, which is worth something on a link in a search result or a social share where the reader decides in half a second.
The tie-breaker is usually the sentence test. Read your candidate aloud as a phrase. If "the London plumbing guide" is already how people describe what you have made, the extension is finishing a sentence somebody else started. If it needs explaining, buy the cheaper address.
| .guide | .info | |
|---|---|---|
| What the word claims | This site walks you through a subject | This site holds information |
| Registry | Binky Moon, LLC (Identity Digital) | Identity Digital Limited |
| In the root zone since | 2014 | 2001 |
| Annual cost | Higher | Lower |
| Short names left | A reasonable choice in most subjects | Thin after two decades |
.guide domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .guide domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyAnyone, anywhere. There is no eligibility rule, no residency test, no publishing credential and nothing to send in afterwards. Identity Digital runs .guide as an open extension on a first-come, first-served basis, which matters in both directions. It means the name you want may still be free, and it means the word in your address carries no external endorsement. Whatever authority the site earns will come from the content, not from the domain.
No, and Google has said so directly. Its Search Central documentation states that new generic extensions are treated like .com and .org, and that keywords in a top-level domain give no advantage or disadvantage in search. What a .guide can do is improve the click rather than the position, because a reader scanning a results page sees the format promised in the address. That is a real benefit, but it is a click-through benefit and not a ranking one.
Four things cause that. Somebody holds it and has not built anything yet. It sits on the ICANN Specification 5 reserved list. The registry has kept it back for its own use or placed it in a premium tier. Or a trademark holder has blocked it across the whole Identity Digital portfolio using DPML. You can test for the last one by looking up the same label with dpml.zone after it in WHOIS. A DPML block cannot be bought out unless you hold the matching trademark.
Usually a few days. You will need the authorisation code from your current registrar with the domain unlocked, and the registry enforces the standard 60-day lock, so a name registered or transferred inside the last two months cannot move yet. Identity Digital states that restriction plainly in its own grace period documentation. Your remaining registration period carries across and the transfer adds a year to it, so nothing is lost by moving mid-term.
Included with Your .guide Domain
DNS Management
Full DNS zone editor to manage A, CNAME, MX, TXT, and all record types.
Email Forwarding
Set up professional email addresses and forward to any inbox.
Auto-Renewal
Never lose your domain with automatic renewal protection.
Free 10GB Mailbox
One 10GB mailbox (POP3/IMAP) included with every domain, on any TLD.
Other Lifestyle Domains Extensions
Register your .guide domain today
Secure your .guide domain from just £34.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
