Domain Market Intelligence Weekly：August 31 – September 6, 2026

This week in domain intelligence:

• “muse” .com registrations totaled 1,244, compared with 1,247 the previous week. Meta launched its Muse personal agent on September 8, after the report week.
• Hundreds of domains combining clothing terms with Mumbai-area place names were registered on September 1, mostly through GoDaddy.
• .xyz registrations rose from 39,546 to 313,589, with daily counts above 55,000 from Wednesday through Sunday.
• Russia’s domain identity-verification requirement took effect on September 1. A .name registrant reported receiving notice of the planned third-level shutdown.

Domain Registration Intelligence

Weekly Registration Overview

New domain registrations from August 31 to September 6, 2026, compared with August 24-30. The table covers selected extensions. Both weeks use data available on September 8, including records added since the previous issue. Source: DomainKits Trends.

.xyz recorded the largest increase among the listed extensions, from 39,546 to 313,589 registrations. Daily counts rose from 6,290 on September 1 to 57,584 on September 2 and stayed between 55,658 and 68,691 through Sunday. The weekend counts were 60,877 and 55,658, compared with 14,442 and 4,368 on August 22-23, after the previous increase.

Outside the table, .casa fell from 13,263 to 1,466 registrations and .vip from 45,614 to 26,066. Neither repeated the one-day spike recorded the previous week, on August 27 for .casa and August 28 for .vip. .asia recorded another Friday peak: 10,540 registrations on September 4, following 11,891 on August 28.

Hot Keywords

Four-week window: August 10 to September 6, 2026. Pure-letter .com registrations only. Selection: of the twenty highest-volume keywords over the window, the two largest weekly gainers and the three largest decliners. Source: DomainKits Trends.

“ai” rose 7.8% from 6,074 to 6,548, the largest percentage increase among the twenty highest-volume keywords. Its weekly counts ranged from 6,074 to 6,780 across the four weeks shown.

Emerging .com Keywords

Selected keywords with at least 100 registrations in the report week and at least twice the mean of the prior three weeks. Counts cover pure-letter .com registrations only. Source: DomainKits NRDS.

The keyword dataset contains 772,235 pure-letter .com registrations. The overview table also includes names with digits and hyphens. Prior three-week averages are rounded; the percentage change for pathos is omitted because its baseline was fewer than three registrations a week.

“muse” recorded 1,244 registrations, almost unchanged from 1,247 the previous week. “hatch” increased from 236 to 368, with 97 registrations on September 3. “meta” rose from 642 to 1,044, up 62.6%.

Marketplace nameservers accounted for 68.8% of muse registrations, 62.6% of meta and 52.2% of hatch. Dominet (HK), Spaceship, Cloud Yuqu and Chengdu West Dimension appeared among the leading registrars for all three keywords. These are shared services used by multiple registrants; the overlap does not identify a common owner.

A subset of the totals pairs the company name with a product name directly. During the week, 241 registered domains contain “metamuse” and 155 contain “metahatch”, against 265 and 62 in the equivalent counts a week earlier. Both sets use the same construction: the paired terms followed by one further word, with that word not repeated across the set. Examples are metamuseopenweights.com, metamusegovernment.com, metahatchaiassistant.com and metahatchchips.com. The nameservers differ between the two sets. Most metamuse names use Afternic nameservers, while most metahatch names use ns1.dyna-ns.net and ns2.dyna-ns.net. A shared construction on different nameservers does not establish a shared registrant.

Meta released Muse Spark 1.3 on September 2 through Muse Code and the Meta Model API. Its personal agent launched on September 8, two days after the reporting period. The September 8 post also identifies Hatch as the internal name for Muse in the codebase. Keyword matches alone do not establish that every registration refers to Meta.

Clothing Names on One Nameserver

“mumbai” reached 258 registrations against a prior three-week mean of 40, with 207 on Tuesday September 1. The keyword rows understate the group they belong to. On that date ns1.stableserver.net recorded 604 .com registrations, of which 598 combine a clothing or tailoring term with one of six endings: andheri, juhu, mumbai, navimumbai, thane and nearme. GoDaddy was the registrar for almost all of them. Examples include formalblazersmumbai.com, weddingtuxedosthane.com and designerkurtaformenjuhu.com.

Six names that day fall outside the pattern. The group shares a registration date, registrar and nameserver pair, and the records do not identify the registrants. Registrations under the same keywords a day earlier, including devfestmumbai.com and busrentalmumbai.com, used different registrars and nameservers and are counted in the weekly totals but are not part of this group.

Pathos Registrations at Key-Systems

“pathos” rose from a prior three-week average of about two registrations to 452. Of these, 451 were registered between September 1 and 4, with one more on September 6. Key-Systems accounted for 450 of the 452. Many names combined pathos with media and public-relations terms, including press, news, story, newsroom and monitor. The combination of pathos and mind appeared in 226 names; examples include pathosmindpulse.com, pathospressroom.com and pathosmedialab.com.

The most frequently recorded nameserver was ns1.dnsimple-edge.com, appearing on 231 names; 221 registrations used Cloudflare nameservers. No related launch, funding announcement or company update was identified in the X posts reviewed for the registration dates.

Watchlist

“watermelon” remains below the emerging-keyword threshold of 100 registrations a week. The prior issue tracked it following reports of a Meta model using that codename. This week, metawatermelonagi.com was registered on September 6. Two further names, metawatermelonagent.com and metawatermelonagents.com, were registered on September 7, outside the reporting period.

Registration data reflects observed patterns in newly registered domain names and does not constitute investment advice. Individual registrant intent cannot be confirmed from registration data alone.

Domain Trading Intelligence

Selected Sales Reported This Week

Five disclosed sales reported from August 31 to September 6, 2026, each with a named platform. The selection comes from 759 sale records, of which 44 had more than one reporting source. Dates below are reporting dates.

klo.com was the only sale in this selection recorded by more than one reporting source.

Industry News

Russia introduces ESIA verification for .ru, .рф and .su. From September 1, registration, renewal, changes of registrant or registrar, and delegation updates require identification through ESIA, the Gosuslugi state services system. The registry coordination centre says existing domains can continue operating until the end of their registration term without verification if no changes are needed. Renewal requires verification; an unrenewed domain loses delegation at expiry and is cancelled after the priority renewal period. Coordination Center FAQ

A .name holder reports receiving a shutdown notice. On September 3, Neil Fraser wrote that his registrar had notified him of the planned termination of third-level .name domains. He said neil.fraser.name would stop working in February 2027 despite being paid through 2040, and that his email address would also be lost. Fraser’s account

ICANN approved the third-level service withdrawal on May 7. Its July 28 letter to Verisign records approximately 22,000 registrations and says existing third-level names will be deleted when the service ends. Verisign must give supporting registrars at least 90 days notice and a further reminder at least 30 days before shutdown. The letter also records a pending reconsideration request; it does not specify a shutdown date. ICANN letter

TurnCommerce adds 300 registrar accreditations. Domain Incite reported on September 3 that the DropCatch owner added entities numbered DropCatch.com 1546 LLC through DropCatch.com 1845 LLC. The report puts the total operating under the brand above 1,500, against 3,323 ICANN-accredited registrars. TurnCommerce previously added 500 in December 2016. Domain Incite

Premium Domain Intelligence

Selected .com expirations and drop-catches detected from September 2 to September 6 by DomainKits Changes Monitor. The available monitoring window does not cover August 31 or September 1.

Notable Expirations

Registry status and nameservers were rechecked on September 8. The registry can automatically advance a .com expiration date by one year, so that change alone does not confirm a registrant renewal. The table retains names still showing expiration-related status or nameservers.

nosesa.com and remimi.com were in the redemption period at the September 8 check. Recovery at this stage is handled through the current registrar and may carry an additional fee. ICANN renewal FAQ

Notable Drop-Catches

Names Followed From Earlier Issues

bvj.com, listed in last week’s expiration table, now has an expiration date of August 27, 2031, and nameservers at worldnic.com. It has been removed from the expiration list. justspace.com moved from renewal-hold nameservers to ns1.ziontech.co.uk and ns2.ziontech.co.uk. winebar.com remains renewed, with an expiration date of August 21, 2028.

The remaining names showed no change at the September 8 check. automaven.com, wetstream.com and yogatools.com still used renewyourname.net nameservers; bloodroot.com, biotime.com and snapdog.com used pendingrenewaldeletion.com. artfamily.com remained on expired.reg.ru and allmall.com on parkpage.foundationapi.com. galibi.com and lifepower.com were still in the redemption period.

Weekly Insight

Meta launched its Muse personal agent on September 8, after the August 31-September 6 reporting period. The launch-day records below are a separate update to the weekly keyword counts. They were observed through DomainKits live new-domain search.

On September 8, musesecurevirtualmachine.com was registered at 19:05:30 UTC and musesecurevm.org at 20:06:47 UTC. Both use forms of “Muse Secure VM”, a name in Meta’s technical post published that day. The post also names an authentication service called hatch-authd; museauthd.com was registered at 19:45:53 UTC. The registration times are recorded, but the publication time of each product detail was not established.

Seven muse-prefixed .ai domains were registered between 06:07:20 and 06:36:36 UTC the same day. They include musememory.ai, musecontext.ai, musecompanion.ai and museaistudio.ai, alongside muselayer.ai, musesuite.ai and museguard.ai.

September 8 search results. All seven names show two-year terms, the minimum registration period for .ai, and Cross-TLD counts from 2 to 5. .ai registration terms

Method Notes

• Revised registration figures. Both weeks in the overview use the September 8 dataset. Records added since the previous issue increased the August 24-30 totals by 855 for .com and 224 for .dev. Each of the other five listed extensions changed by fewer than 40.
• Sales coverage. Of 759 records, 715 had one reporting source and 44 had more than one. September 6 had 16 records, compared with 109 to 139 on each other day. These are collected reports, not a count of all completed sales. The prior week’s sample now contains 549 records, compared with 444 at publication.
• Keyword coverage. Counts cover 772,235 pure-letter .com registrations. A name may match more than one keyword, so the rows are not additive.
• Monitoring dates. Expirations and drop-catches were detected from September 2 to September 6. The separate launch-day observations in Weekly Insight are dated September 8.
• Nameservers show DNS delegation only. They do not confirm an active site, buyer identity or registrant intent.

Data Sources: Sales: collected public reports; the selected table identifies the platform named in each report. Registration and trend data: DomainKits. Domain changes: DomainKits Changes. Industry sources are linked in the relevant items. For reference only, not investment advice.
Published by: ABTdomain