Domain Market Intelligence Weekly — April 13–19, 2026

Domain Trading Intelligence

Top Sales This Week

Ten highest publicly reported domain name sales between April 13 and April 19, 2026, as recorded by NameBio’s daily market reports. The .com market produced two standout transactions: NAS.com at $1,250,000 and 7555.com at $128,888 — both eclipsing last week’s .ai-led leaderboard.

Notable Transaction Details

NAS.com sold for $1.25 million at Lumis, the week’s largest transaction and the biggest single-name .com sale reported since Midnight.com ($1.15M) in January. The buyer is Nuseir Yassin, founder of Nas.com (the community-platform company behind the Nas Daily media brand); NAS.io now redirects to NAS.com and the company has incorporated the .com into its updated logo. NameBio’s history shows NAS.com previously traded at $720,000 in September 2020 — this week’s sale represents a 74% appreciation over five years, consistent with the broader premium three-letter .com market. A textbook upgrade story: a well-funded operating company trading an established .io for the matching .com once budget and positioning align.

7555.com sold for $128,888 on GoDaddy. Four-number .com domains in the 1000–9999 range are among the most liquid segments of the Chinese market, where repeating-digit patterns and auspicious number combinations command persistent premiums. This name last traded at NameJet in March 2009 for $1,917 — a ~6,600% increase over the 17-year hold. April 16 saw $1,935,952 in tracked NameBio sales $100+, with NAS.com and 7555.com accounting for the majority of the day’s dollar volume.

The German aftermarket delivered the week’s top ccTLD result. rechnungen.de (German for “invoices”) sold on Sedo for €44,500, reinforcing that utility keywords in national languages continue to out-perform speculative brandables at Sedo’s traditional sweet spot. XXX.now ($50,000 at TOP.DOMAINS) led the non-.com leaderboard, while GKE.com ($34,677) and Chronicled.com ($17,250) were the notable three-letter and English-word .com sales. Aquafaba.com ($35,318) reflects ongoing end-user demand for specific food-industry terms, and Archipelago.eu ($17,672 at Sedo) rounded out the European top tier.

Industry News

ICANN’s next new gTLD application window opens April 30, 2026 — nine days from publication. The 105-day window runs through August 12, with an evaluation fee of $227,000 per application. This is the first major new gTLD round since 2012 and is expected to bring brand TLDs (.google, .bmw, etc.), community strings, and new generic extensions. Applicants have been finalizing submissions throughout April. (ICANN, Domain Name Wire)

Domain Registration Intelligence

Weekly Registration Overview

New-registration volume for major gTLDs over the April 13–19 window, with 7-day and 14-day moving averages as of April 19. Data sourced from DomainKits zone file analysis.

.com extended its recovery into a second week, with the 7-day moving average (133,460) holding above the 14-day (132,641). The weekly peak was April 14 at 152,098 registrations, with April 16 also strong at 150,830. The familiar weekend dip reappeared: April 18 fell to 99,477 and April 19 to 99,187, the first sub-100K days since March.

.net reversed last week’s weakness. The 7d MA (7,365) is now above the 14d MA (7,260), with April 15 recording 8,537 new registrations — the highest single-day figure in the reporting window. .org sustained its positive streak into a fourth week; April 15 posted 10,402 new .org registrations. .xyz remained volatile, with April 16 spiking to 12,068 (the second such spike in two weeks) before cooling to 4,870 by April 19; the 7d and 14d averages are nearly identical, reflecting an unstable but roughly flat baseline.

Hot Keywords in Domain Registrations

Top 5 keywords by 28-day registration volume across all gTLDs, with week-over-week (WoW) momentum comparing the most recent 7-day period (W4) to the prior period (W3):

All five top keywords reversed last week’s declines. This is a clear break from the two-week cooling pattern reported in prior editions. “group” and “my” posted the sharpest gains at +17.1% and +16.6%, both broadly distributed across registrars, suggesting organic demand rather than single-operator activity. “ai” returned to growth (+7.2%) after a -10.8% contraction the prior week.

Notable movers outside the top 5: “tech” climbed to 27,997 (28d) with W4 volume at 7,436 (up 10.7% W-o-W), “capital” surged 33.7% from 2,899 to 3,877 with GoDaddy leading at 11.0%, and “labs” rose 19.8% to 3,900. On the downside, “family” — last week’s breakout at +143% — retreated 26.7% from 3,227 to 2,364 as the Spaceship-concentrated campaign cooled, a textbook single-operator fade pattern. “bet” added another 27.4% gain to 5,798 (W4), its fifth consecutive week of growth, indicating sustained multi-party interest in gambling-adjacent keywords.

Emerging Keywords

Keywords with sudden registration spikes in the last 7 days. Each entry is assessed for whether the spike reflects multi-party demand (genuine market signal) or single-operator activity (less actionable).

Spotlight: Why “peptides” Is the Strongest Speculative Signal This Week

Most emerging keywords on any given week are noise — a single operator running a bulk registration, or a crypto narrative chased by a handful of portfolio-builders. “peptides” is a rare exception: every signal we cross-check lines up.

1. Real demand, not hype. Google Ads data shows 450,000 monthly searches for “peptides” with a cost-per-click range of $1.17 to $5.32 and competition scored 69/100 (High). High CPC paired with high volume means advertisers are actively bidding — there is a real end-user funnel behind this keyword, not just speculative interest. That is the precondition any investable keyword needs.

2. External catalyst with staying power. The W3→W4 jump (411 to 1,412, a 3.4× increase) is driven by ongoing FDA enforcement against compounded GLP-1 and tirzepatide sources. The FDA’s late-2025 decision that tirzepatide was no longer in shortage stripped most 503A compounders of their legal basis, and telehealth peptide providers spent April 2026 adjusting business models. This is a regulatory story that will continue unfolding through 2026 — not a single-day news spike.

3. Multi-party participation, not a single-operator build. The top registrar (GoDaddy at 39.0%) is well below the ≥70% single-registrar thresholds we see in pure speculative plays like “mont” (PDR 84.5%) or “defai” (Onamae 99.6%). The .com ratio of 0.91 is extremely high — serious registrants, not .xyz throwaways. The rest of the 61% spreads across NameCheap, Spaceship, Dynadot, and others. This is genuinely broad participation.

4. The for-sale rate sits in the healthy band. Not suppressed, not saturated — just the normal footprint you see when a keyword has a functioning secondary market without being cornered by flippers. That is the profile of a category where active pricing discovery is happening and there is still room for new participants.

5. Marketplace nameservers confirm professional positioning. A meaningful share of new peptides registrations point at marketplace-integrated nameservers — Spaceship NS at 16.0%, and our sampling of top registrations shows substantial Afternic NS usage as well. Both are smart-money tells: Spaceship and Afternic each offer integrated marketplace + for-sale landing infrastructure, and experienced domain investors route new acquisitions through them directly. When two separate marketplace ecosystems both show elevated NS concentration on the same keyword, it means professional capital is building positions through multiple channels — not a single operator with one playbook.

What to watch next

Three practical angles, in order of risk:

1. Generic + peptides combinations with prefix_tld_count ≥ 5 across multiple TLDs. When multiple parties register the same prefix (e.g., “nordiclab” taken on .com, .net, .store, .shop, .co) within the same week, the naming pattern is being validated in real time. Track these via DomainKits NRDS sorted by tld_counter_desc.
2. Short-prefix + peptides .com that are still available at standard registration cost. With 1,517 new peptides .com registrations in 10 days and rising, liquidity at registration cost is closing fast. Clean 3–5 letter prefixes are the highest-leverage plays.
3. Adjacent keywords likely to follow. “semaglutide,” “tirzepatide,” “GLP-1,” “compounded,” “503A,” and specific peptide names (BPC-157, TB-500, retatrutide) are the natural expansion ring. These did not yet appear in this week’s emerging list but should be monitored in the coming weeks.

Case Study: When a Registration Surge Is an Anti-Signal

“mont” (157 → 1,322, an 8.4× increase) and “crest” (381 → 1,545, a 4× increase) both posted bigger W-o-W jumps than peptides did. On volume alone, either could look like the trade of the week. They are not. They are the inverse of peptides — a worked example of why the registration number alone tells you almost nothing.

The defining data point for both keywords is the same: the for-sale rate is essentially zero. With over 2,800 new registrations combined, virtually none are listed on any secondary-market nameserver. That is a statistical near-impossibility for a genuinely hot keyword. Even a modest speculative tailwind draws some flippers — the market’s most liquidity-sensitive participants — to test the waters with at least a handful of for-sale listings. When 2,800 registrations produce essentially zero for-sale activity, the market is telling you something clear: the people who make their living detecting keyword opportunities have looked at these and walked away.

Stepping back, the rest of the profile explains why. “mont” is a true multi-language morpheme — French/Italian for “mountain,” Slavic “remont” (renovation), Romance-language place-name prefix. The actual registrations behind the spike are long-tail real-business domains: remontdoma.com (Russian renovation), elmonteccu.com (US credit union), galapagosmontemar.com (Ecuadorian tourism), monteurzimmer24.com (German contractor housing). Commercial intent is real but fragmented across dozens of small markets, with no common naming pattern a professional investor could monetize at scale. Google Ads data confirms the picture: 12,100 monthly searches for “mont” but Competition scored 0/100 (Low), because advertisers will not bid on “mont” in isolation — they bid on “Montessori,” “Montana,” “Mont Blanc,” the completed words.

“crest” follows the same structural logic: high PDR (PublicDomainRegistry) concentration reflecting India/Southeast Asia/Eastern Europe small-business registrations, a word that appears in many semantic contexts (toothpaste brand, surname, heraldry, geography), and a for-sale rate that tells the story plainly.

The contrast with peptides makes the lesson explicit:

A healthy for-sale rate in the presence of a registration surge is a signal of active, multi-party price discovery — what a functioning micro-market looks like. A near-zero for-sale rate alongside an even larger registration surge is a signal that the surge is composed entirely of end-users buying for private, non-transferable use. Both surges are real; only one is an opportunity.

Other Emerging Signals

“defai” (decentralized-finance AI) is the crypto-narrative pick of the week. The keyword went from 1 to 223 registrations, but 100% of those are listed for sale and 99.6% flow through one registrar (Onamae.com). Unlike “qwen” (diversified, AI-adjacent, sustained over three weeks), “defai” looks like a single investor moving fast on a trending token category — the narrative is real (DeFAI now holds an estimated 10% of AI crypto market cap per Binance Research), but the registration activity here is not broad market participation.

Premium Domain Intelligence

Premium .com domain changes tracked from DomainKits Changes, covering short-character and high-value English-word .com domains. This section reports expirations and new registrations (drop-catches) only. Transfers are excluded because the underlying reason cannot be confirmed from public data alone.

Premium .com activity was the highest in four weeks. Two three-letter .com domains entered expiration, the highest 3L expiration count since mid-March, and the 5–8 letter expiration leader (opensoft.com at 50 TLDs) posted the largest cross-extension footprint of any expired domain this month.

Notable Expirations

3-Letter .com Expirations (April 13 – 19, 2026):

Both 3-letter expirations were previously held at MAFF Inc. (a Japanese registrar). lnm.com carries 46 matching prefixes across other TLDs, zxq.com carries 26 — a meaningful cross-extension footprint for pronounceable and consonant-cluster 3L names respectively. These are the kind of expirations that typically trigger competitive drop-catch auctions in the 30–60 day window following release.

5-8 Letter .com Expirations (Top 5 by cross-TLD footprint):

opensoft.com leads with 50 matching prefixes across other TLDs — the largest cross-extension count recorded in any DomainKits weekly tracking so far this month. Its previous home, Xiamen 35.com, is also the prior registrar for stocknow.com (25 TLDs), suggesting both names may have been part of the same Asian-market portfolio that has now entered expiration. biofocus.com (20 TLDs) and assetlab.com (19 TLDs) sit in the biotech and finance/productivity spaces respectively; both were held at Network Solutions, a registrar historically associated with long-held corporate registrations.

New Registrations (Drop-Catches)

Premium .com domains that were re-registered after expiration, typically through competitive drop-catch services:

botbox.com was the highest-profile catch at 38 matching TLDs, secured by Gname — a pattern consistent with AI-agent-related keyword demand (“bot” + “box”). coinrate.com (21 TLDs) was won by Sav.com, aligning with continued crypto-market keyword activity that echoes the “defai” emerging-keyword signal above. The drop-catch landscape this week favored Gname (two of the top five) and mid-tier services (Domainamania, Sav.com) rather than the typical DropCatch.com dominance. For complete domain change data, visit DomainKits Changes.

Weekly Insight

The secondary market’s center of gravity shifted decisively back to .com this week. NAS.com at $1.25 million is the largest single reported .com sale since January, and 7555.com at $128,888 reinforces the persistent liquidity of premium numeric .com inventory. This contrasts with the prior two weeks, where .ai extensions dominated the leaderboard with genesis.ai ($400K) and Free.ai ($350K). The NAS.com transaction is particularly instructive: a company that built its brand on .io upgraded to .com once budget allowed — a pattern end-user domain investors have been anticipating for years, now playing out in real time for named operators. The redirect from NAS.io to NAS.com, combined with logo integration, signals a long-term commitment rather than a speculative hold.

On the registration side, the cooling pattern of the prior two weeks has ended: four of the top five keywords posted positive W-o-W growth, with “group” (+17.1%) and “my” (+16.6%) leading. .com’s 7-day moving average stayed above its 14-day for a second straight week, with April 14 reaching 152,098 new registrations. The standout story, though, sits in the emerging keywords. “peptides” is the cleanest speculative signal we have tracked this year — 450K monthly searches with CPC up to $5.32, a 3.4× W-o-W registration jump, multi-party registrar spread, a 16% Spaceship NS concentration indicating professional-investor positioning, and an FDA regulatory catalyst that will continue developing throughout 2026. Every box checks. Compare that to “defai” (1 → 223), which rides a legitimate crypto narrative but shows concentrated single-operator characteristics (99.6% at one registrar, 100% for-sale). Both are “trends”; only peptides is actionable.

With ICANN’s new gTLD application window opening on April 30 — nine days from publication — the next two weeks will likely see registration activity around candidate-extension keywords accelerate, particularly those tied to announced or rumored brand and generic applications. For more weekly data and analysis, visit ABTdomain.

Data Sources: Registration trends and keyword data from DomainKits Trends. Premium domain changes from DomainKits Changes. Sales figures reflect publicly reported transactions and do not capture private deals without disclosure. Registration data covers gTLDs; ccTLD coverage varies by registry policy. This report is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.