Eric Lyon
Scorpion Agency LLCTop Member
- Impact
- 30,504
Today, I'll be analyzing the .guide gTLD to see if i can dig up any helpful data points that could be stacked with someone elses research into the .guide extension.
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Note: At the time of this analysis there was a 1-character minimum to register a .guide domain. There were also several 1-character .guide domains available to register, but with a mid-3-figure premium registration cost.
With the above in mind, lets dive right in...
.guide domain registration costs
According to Tldes.com the .guide domain registration costs range from $5.18 to $21.99+..guide domains registered today
According to DNS.Coffee there are 19,339 .guide domains registered today.Public .guide domain sales reports
There's a few .guide domain sales reports to look at online.Note: NameBio.com shows 72 .guide domain sales reports ranging from $100 to $8.300.
Some notable sales are:
- vacation.guide: $8,300
- resort.guide: $7,500
- park.guide: $3,500
- relocation.guide: $1,086
- retail.guide: $416
- global.guide: $100
5-year .guide domain growth summary
The .guide gTLD has grown by 18.33% over the last 5 years, expanding from 16,343 registrations in May 2021 to 19,339 registrations in May 2026.
- Total 5-Year Net Increase: +2,996 domains
- Highest Growth Year: May 2025 to May 2026 (+1,421 domains / +7.93% spike)
- Lowest Growth Year: May 2022 to May 2023 (-28 domains / -0.16% slight contraction.
2022: 17522
2023: 17494
2024: 17860
2025: 17918
2026: 19339
Year-by-Year Growth Breakdown
- May 2021 to May 2022 (+1,179 domains | +7.21%)
- Initial steady adoption as businesses built digital resources post-pandemic.
- May 2022 to May 2023 (-28 domains | -0.16%)
- A minor contraction period, likely caused by normal first-year registration expirations outweighing new adoptions.
- May 2023 to May 2024 (+366 domains | +2.09%)
- A return to slow, stabilized baseline growth.
- May 2024 to May 2025 (+58 domains | +0.32%)
- Plateaued growth, maintaining a highly flat baseline just under 18,000 domains.
- May 2025 to May 2026 (+1,421 domains | +7.93%)
- The largest surge in the 5-year window, driven by recent registrar promotions or increased market interest in niche authority extensions.
8 niches for .guide domains
1. Luxury Resorts & AccommodationsDriven by high-value sales like resort.guide ($7,500) and vacation.guide ($8,300), this niche focuses on premium travel experiences. Luxury properties, boutique hotels, and hospitality groups use the extension to curate high-end digital concierges and destination lookbooks for guests.
2. Travel & Local Tourism
As demonstrated by the sale of park.guide ($3,500), local tourism boards, independent travel bloggers, and regional tour operators use the extension to build hyper-local authority. It serves as an intuitive home for city itineraries, hidden-gem finders, and regional sightseeing directories.
3. Outdoor Adventure & Eco-Tourism
This market captures activities like hiking, mountaineering, scuba diving, safari tours, and national park excursions. Professional wilderness guides and outdoor gear companies use .guide to publish safety manuals, trail maps, and booking platforms for guided expeditions.
4. Relocation & Global Mobility
Validated by the sale of relocation.guide ($1,086) and global.guide ($100), this niche serves expats, digital nomads, and corporate relocation services. Platforms in this space provide moving checklists, visa application pathways, and international housing directories.
5. Retail Shopping & Product Curations
The retail sector utilizes this extension for curated consumerism, as highlighted by the sale of retail.guide ($416). Businesses build gift guides, holiday shopping catalogs, and product comparison engines to help consumers navigate complex tech, fashion, or appliance markets.
6. Gaming & Digital Entertainment
The video game industry relies heavily on walkthroughs, item databases, and strategy breakdowns. Esports organizations, independent creators, and wikis use .guide to host optimization tools, character build calculators, and level-by-level video game tutorials.
7. Software Documentation & Tech Tutorials
SaaS companies, open-source developers, and IT firms use the extension to host their user manuals, API documentation, and onboarding hubs. It provides a clean, dedicated subdomain or standalone site separate from their main marketing funnel to help users troubleshoot software.
8. Professional Career & Financial Advice
This niche belongs to life coaches, career counselors, investment advisors, and corporate consultants. These experts use the domain to position themselves as the definitive "guide" in their industry, hosting masterclasses, resume builders, and wealth-management frameworks.
What a playful .guide domain hack might look like
A domain hack occurs when the word before the dot combines with the extension after the dot to spell out a single, seamless phrase or word. Because .guide is a complete, multi-letter word, domain hacks using this extension focus on phonetic phrases, compound words, or rhythmic call-to-action statements.Phonetic Compound Words
You can use the left side of the dot to complete a single, natural compound word where "guide" is the anchor suffix.
- tour.guide (Tour guide)
- field.guide (Field guide)
- price.guide (Price guide)
- study.guide (Study guide)
- buyer.guide (Buyer guide)
- style.guide (Style guide)
You can use a verb before the dot to turn the entire URL into a direct, active command or a question.
- need.guide ("Need guide" - perfect for a help desk or customer support hub)
- get.a.guide ("Get a guide" - ideal for tour booking agencies or hiring consultants)
- be.a.guide ("Be a guide" - highly effective for recruitment pages or coaching certification programs)
- read.the.guide ("Read the guide" - an intuitive link shortener for software documentation or user manuals)
- find.your.guide ("Find your guide" - a matching platform for mentors, therapists, or local tutors)
You can use words that rhyme with "guide" to create a memorable, punchy cadence that sticks in a user's mind.
- worldwide.guide (Worldwide guide)
- inside.guide (Inside guide - great for exclusive industry secrets or back-stage content)
- stepinside.guide (Step inside guide)
- glide.guide (Glide guide - fun branding for aviation, ice skating, or smooth software interfaces)
- stride.guide (Stride guide - ideal for a running clinic, shoe review site, or career advancement program)
10 lead sources for .guide domain outbound campaigns
1. Product Hunt & AppSumo- The Lead Type: Early-stage SaaS startups, digital creators, and indie hackers launching new tools.
- Why it Works: These companies frequently launch standalone "knowledge bases," onboarding platforms, or tool directories alongside their main product. They are highly receptive to modern, tech-forward gTLDs for their documentation sites.
- The Lead Type: Creators selling high-volume digital PDF study planners, travel itineraries, fitness programs, or crochet patterns.
- Why it Works: These merchants usually sell via a marketplace link (e.g., ://etsy.com). Offering them a matching domain hack (like traveltemplates.guide) gives them an easy way to build a standalone brand.
- The Lead Type: Independent local tour operators, wilderness guides, excursion agencies, and boutique travel hosts.
- Why it Works: This directly targets the exact end-users who validated the historic sales of resort.guide ($7,500) and park.guide ($3,500). Many of these operators rely on third-party marketplace links and lack a premium, authoritative direct-booking URL.
- The Lead Type: Authors who write "How-To" books, self-help manuals, field guides, or test-prep books.
- Why it Works: Authors frequently need a centralized hub to collect email newsletter sign-ups, host bonus downloadable content, or sell courses. A domain that matches their book title (e.g., [BookTitle].guide) is an easy sell.
- The Lead Type: Developers managing popular open-source software libraries, frameworks, or developer tools.
- Why it Works: Open-source projects notoriously have messy documentation hosted on default GitHub Pages URLs (e.g., username.github.io/project). Pitching a clean .guide domain offers them a highly professional upgrade for their wiki or manual.
- The Lead Type: Digital educators, corporate trainers, and independent course creators building masterclasses or certification programs.
- Why it Works: These educators often use long, unforgettable URLs provided by their course platforms. A .guide domain functions perfectly as a direct link shortener or landing page for their curriculum.
- The Lead Type: Relocation consultants, career coaches, financial planners, and local real estate agencies in major metro areas.
- Why it Works: If you own a geographic or industry-specific domain (like relocation.guide or retail.guide), you can scrape Google Maps for businesses in those specific sectors that are currently operating on weak, non-brandable .net or .org domains.
- The Lead Type: High-traffic newsletter writers and journalists who specialize in curation, industry analysis, or niche breakdowns.
- Why it Works: Modern newsletter writers are transitioning into full-scale media brands. Upgrading them from a default Substack subdomain to a dedicated .guide domain enhances their search engine authority and brand independence.
- The Lead Type: "How-to" channels, tech reviewers, and travel vloggers who consistently produce tutorials and resource roundups.
- Why it Works: These creators constantly reference a "link in bio" for their resources. A punchy, memorable domain hack helps them call out their website verbally in videos (e.g., "Go to techsetup.guide to read the full breakdown").
- The Lead Type: Buyers who missed out on registering a legacy .com domain or lost it in an auction, but still have an active trademark or business.
- Why it Works: You can monitor domain drop lists for high-value keywords. If a company loses or cannot afford citytours.com, pitching them citytours.guide as an exact-match alternative provides an immediate solution.
- How to leverage an Ai Assistant to find domain leads
- How to leverage Social media to find domain leads
- How to leverage Job Boards to find domain leads
- eMail Marketing Best Practices for Domain Outreach
- List of FREE tools for outbound domain sales
- Outbound Domain sales Tips
Legal considerations when selling a domain to an existing business
Approaching a business with an existing trademark to sell them a matching or similar domain name is a high-risk strategy. In the domain industry, this is a legal minefield that often triggers cybersquatting lawsuits or forced domain forfeitures. Before sending an outbound pitch, you must understand the critical legal frameworks that protect trademark owners.The Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA)
In the United States, the ACPA is a federal law that allows trademark owners to sue anyone who registers, traffics in, or uses a domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to a distinctive trademark, with a "bad faith intent to profit."
- The Trap: Reaching out to a trademark holder to sell them "their" name is often used in court as the primary, definitive evidence of "bad faith intent to profit."
- The Penalty: Under the ACPA, a court can order you to forfeit the domain name and hit you with statutory damages ranging from $1,000 to $100,000 per domain name.
The UDRP is an international, expedited administrative process established by ICANN. It is a mandatory arbitration system used to seize domains from investors without going to actual court. To win a UDRP case and force you to hand over the domain for free, a trademark owner must prove three things:
- Similarity: Your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to their trademark.
- No Rights: You have no legitimate rights or business interest in the domain name (e.g., you aren't actually running a business under that name).
- Bad Faith: You registered and are using the domain name in bad faith.
Trademark Infringement and Dilution
If you host a "parked" page on the domain that automatically generates pay-per-click (PPC) ads, and those ads display links to the trademark ownerโs direct competitors, you are committing trademark infringement. You are actively capitalizing on their established brand equity and confusing their consumer base to make a profit.
Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH)
If you registered a generic word (e.g., park.guide or retail.guide) before a company trademarked that phrase, you are generally in the clear. If that company then threatens you legally just to steal your legitimately registered generic domain, they can be found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. This is an abuse of the administrative process, and it protects legitimate domain investors from corporate bullying.
How to Potentially Handle Outbound Pitching
To protect yourself from legal action when managing an outbound campaign, adhere to these strict operational rules:
- Filter Out Famous Brands: Never register or pitch a domain containing a famous, highly distinct trademark (e.g., apple.guide, nike.guide, disney.guide).
- Check TESS Before Pitching: Always search the USPTO Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) or global databases like WIPO. If a highly specific, non-generic business owns the exact match trademark for that phrase, do not contact them.
- Target the Industry, Not One Company: Instead of emailing Target Corporation to sell target.guide, pitch the domain to general digital marketing agencies or retail consultancies as a generic industry category tool.
- Let Buyers Find You: The safest legal route is passive selling. Set up a clean, professional "For Sale" landing page on the domain using marketplaces like Dan.com, Afternic, or Sedo. This allows companies to approach you, completely eliminating the argument that you targeted them in bad faith.
Potential .guide domain investing strategy
Based on the established data baseline, including a current zone file size of 19,339 registered domains (per DNS.Coffee), historical sales ranging from $100 to $8,300 (per NameBio), and a stable 18.33% 5-year growth trajectory, the .guide gTLD is a low-volatility, utility-driven extension. It is not an extension built for rapid, liquid domain flipping; instead, it requires a highly targeted, value-add approach.Acquisition Strategy (What to Buy)
Do not buy random dictionary words. Instead, focus entirely on high-commercial-utility domain hacks and exact-match verticals that replicate successful historical sales patterns.
- Replicate the Top Sales Matrix: NameBio data proves that the highest-valued sales are hyper-specific, high-ticket travel and lifestyle niches (vacation.guide at $8,300, resort.guide at $7,500). Focus heavily on premium hospitality, high-end recreation, or complex consumer industries (e.g., safari.guide, glamping.guide, yacht.guide).
- Target Pure Suffix Hacks: Hand-register phrases that seamlessly pair with the word "guide" as a single compound phrase (e.g., buyer.guide, gift.guide, pricing.guide, tenant.guide).
- Avoid High-Price Registry Premiums: Identity Digital (the registry) holds back top-tier single words for steep annual premium fees. Only acquire domains that pass through at standard retail registration costs ($5.18 to $6.49 first year) to minimize your holding costs and maximize your profit margins.
Because outbound pitching is your main liquidation route, you must run a strict legal screen during the acquisition phase to avoid ACPA lawsuits or UDRP forfeitures.
- The Generics-Only Rule: Only register pure dictionary words, geographic locations, or broad industry terms (like relocation.guide or retail.guide).
- Clear Trademark Screening: Run every prospective name through the USPTO or WIPO databases. If a phrase is tied to a distinct corporate brand, skip it entirely to eliminate any future claims of "bad faith registration".
Because .guide holds a small 0.03% total new gTLD market share, waiting for passive inbound buyers via marketplace landing pages will result in incredibly slow liquidation cycles. You must actively generate your own market.
- Target Content Creators Over Legacy Corporations: Do not pitch legacy .com corporations who view new gTLDs with skepticism. Instead, target agile, tech-forward end-users scraped from Product Hunt, Beehiiv, Substack, and Etsy digital download storefronts.
- Pitch as a "Brand Upgrade" or Link Shortener: Frame your pitch to creators who are currently using messy subdomains (://substack.com) or marketplace links (://etsy.com). Sell the domain as a clean, authority-building link shortener for their direct-to-consumer resources.
- Price for High-Volume Velocity: Do not hold out for $10,000 corporate buyouts. Target an end-user sweet spot of $250 to $1,200. This range is low enough to fit into a creator's or small business's discretionary marketing budget without requiring corporate board approval, allowing you to flip a $6 hand-registration for a massive return on investment quickly.
- How to leverage an Ai Assistant to find domain leads
- How to leverage Social media to find domain leads
- How to leverage Job Boards to find domain leads
- eMail Marketing Best Practices for Domain Outreach
- List of FREE tools for outbound domain sales
- Outbound Domain sales Tips
Questions for you
- Do you own any .guide domains?
- If so, how are they doing for you?
- Thinking about investing into .guide domains?
- If so, what niche will you target and why?
What works for one may not work for another and vice versa.
Have a great domain investing adventure!
