This week in domain intelligence:
- A new AI model’s name drew a wave of .com registrations, and where the names point splits them three ways.
- The week’s largest disclosed sale was a common English word in .com. The second largest is not in the table because its venue could not be verified.
- Three-letter .com names reached expiry holds during the week, and most were renewed before publication.
- A naming pattern from last week’s issue came back on new brands, through a different registrar.
Domain Registration Intelligence
Weekly Registration Overview
New domain registrations from September 14 to September 20, 2026, compared with September 7 to September 13. The table covers selected extensions. Both weeks use data available on September 22, including records added since the previous issue. Source: DomainKits Trends.
| TLD | Sep 14-20 total | Daily avg | Sep 7-13 total | Daily avg | Daily avg change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .com | 979,967 | 139,995 | 984,939 | 140,706 | -711 |
| .org | 55,021 | 7,860 | 55,803 | 7,972 | -112 |
| .net | 53,240 | 7,606 | 56,790 | 8,113 | -507 |
| .app | 25,084 | 3,583 | 28,601 | 4,086 | -503 |
| .dev | 8,480 | 1,211 | 8,697 | 1,242 | -31 |
| .xyz | 421,740 | 60,249 | 420,537 | 60,077 | +172 |
Five of the six extensions fell. .app dropped 12.3%, .net 6.3%, .dev 2.5%, .org 1.4% and .com 0.5%. .xyz rose 0.3% and averaged above 60,000 a day for the second week in a row. The week before that, when its current run started, averaged 44,804.
Outside the table, .cfd more than doubled, from 22,654 to 48,308. Two days account for 78% of the week: 18,848 registrations on Tuesday September 15 and 18,644 on Wednesday September 16. In the registration records for those two days, 24,740 names went through one registrar, GMO Internet, and use its own nameservers. Another 4,998, registered on the Tuesday through a different registrar, share one nameserver pair. .top fell from 137,591 to 84,105, .asia rose from 6,453 to 11,258 and .biz fell from 4,907 to 3,471.
.cam fell from 22,853 to 7,604. The run covered in the last issue left one busy day, Friday September 18, with 4,950 registrations. Of those, 3,600 are split evenly across twelve nameserver pairs, exactly 300 names each, all registered through Dynadot. The names are short strings of letters and digits.
Hot Keywords
Four-week window: August 24 to September 20, 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 by percentage. Source: DomainKits Trends.
| Keyword | Aug 24-30 | Aug 31 – Sep 6 | Sep 7-13 | Sep 14-20 | W-o-W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| home | 4,355 | 4,159 | 4,269 | 4,569 | +7.0% |
| app | 3,511 | 3,473 | 3,349 | 3,547 | +5.9% |
| media | 2,527 | 2,618 | 2,868 | 2,529 | -11.8% |
| digital | 2,541 | 2,689 | 2,850 | 2,663 | -6.6% |
| store | 2,701 | 2,661 | 2,658 | 2,551 | -4.0% |
“ai” is still the highest-volume keyword in the window. It moved from 6,500 to 6,502, the second week in a row with a change under one percent. “media” and “digital” gave back the gains they made the week before.
Emerging .com Keywords
Keywords with at least 100 registrations in the report week and at least twice the mean of the prior three weeks, ranked by report-week volume, top five shown. Counts cover pure-letter .com registrations only, deduplicated by domain. Two terms that qualified were left out: one is a conjunction in another language that the counter also matches inside unrelated words, and the other is a company trademark. A third set was left out because the names target a named individual. Source: DomainKits NRDS.
| Keyword | Prior 3-week avg | Report week | vs. avg | Peak day share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| access | 512 | 1,040 | +103% | 43% |
| jev | 5 | 960 | +19,100% | 24% |
| peptide | 250 | 956 | +282% | 79% |
| gazelle | 8 | 227 | +2,861% | 96% |
| superior | 72 | 219 | +203% | 56% |
The keyword dataset holds 761,063 pure-letter .com registrations for the week, out of 975,965 in the registration records; the overview table uses the separate daily trend series, so its .com total differs.
What the Jev Names Are For
TypeSafe AI came out of stealth on September 15 with a $40 million seed round and opened a waitlist for its first model, Jev, according to the company’s announcement that day. DomainKits covered the first two days of registrations in Newly Registered Domains After Jev on September 18. That article counts .com names that begin or end with “jev”. This report counts “jev” as a whole word, so the daily figures differ slightly. This section follows the same wave to the end of the week.
Registrations containing “jev” went from a prior three-week mean of 5 to 960, starting the day after the announcement.
| Day | Registrations |
|---|---|
| Mon Sep 14 | 1 |
| Tue Sep 15 | 0 |
| Wed Sep 16 | 154 |
| Thu Sep 17 | 232 |
| Fri Sep 18 | 224 |
| Sat Sep 19 | 217 |
| Sun Sep 20 | 132 |
The names came through 30 registrars and sit on 123 different nameserver setups. The most common second word appears seven times in 960 names. The outreach sets further down, by contrast, repeat one brand name in every entry.
Where the names pointed when the record was captured, one to two days after registration, grouped by who runs the nameservers:
| Nameserver operator | Names | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Spaceship | 369 | 38% |
| Afternic | 243 | 25% |
| Cloudflare | 76 | 8% |
| Atom | 57 | 6% |
| Namecheap | 55 | 6% |
| Other | 160 | 17% |
Where the names point splits three ways. A third, 300, sit on Afternic or Atom nameservers, which means they are listed for sale. A smaller group point at providers used to put up a site: 76 on Cloudflare, 53 of them because they were registered there, and 10 on Vercel or AWS; a nameserver alone does not show whether a site exists. Almost all of the rest, over half of the total, remain on the default nameservers their registrars assign.
The listings show the same spread as the registrations. The 300 names on marketplace nameservers are generic product combinations put together one at a time, metajev, jevchat, jevpay, jevcode, jevstudio, jevmodel, pricejev, jevpayments, and they were listed within days of registration. One registrar accounts for 173 of the 300, and names containing “rsi” registered through it sit on the same marketplace nameservers, 85 of them on September 16. jev.ai itself was recorded sold on September 15 for $44,995, the day of the announcement; the buyer has not been publicly disclosed.
One Batch, Two Brands
The September 15 issue described a set built from one fixed term plus mail and contact words, registered in one day through one registrar. That term, “outlier”, fell from 343 to 12 this week, and the same construction appeared on two other brands.
| Set | Registered | Names in the cell | Week total |
|---|---|---|---|
| theinfluenceroom | Mon Sep 14 | 133 | 200 |
| cohleymktg | Mon Sep 14 | 100 | 130 |
Examples: theinfluenceroominbox, kickstartinfluenceroom, inboxcohleymktg, joincohleymktg. The added words are the same as last time: inbox, mail, reach, join, try. All 233 were registered on the same day, through the same registrar, on the same four nameservers, so they form one batch across both brands; those nameservers are shared hosting with about 35,000 domains on the first of them, so they group the batch without identifying its owner. Last week’s set used a different registrar and one nameserver pair per name, so nothing in the records links the two.
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
Five disclosed sales from September 14 to September 20, with the platform as named by the seller, by the platform’s own auction result, or by daily sales reporting where the registrar of record is consistent with it. Dates are the sale dates assigned by the reports, not publication or settlement dates.
| Domain | Price | Platform | Reported sale date |
|---|---|---|---|
| relationships.com | $226,000 | GoDaddy | Sep 19 |
| variance.io | $50,000 | Atom.com | Sep 18 |
| jev.ai | $44,995 | Atom.com | Sep 15 |
| 7720.com | $37,508 | GoDaddy | Sep 14 |
| eventspaces.com | $22,000 | DropCatch | Sep 17 |
relationships.com, a plain English word, led the week at $226,000. variance.io and jev.ai are short brandable names in .io and .ai, both sold through Atom.com; jev.ai is the name of the model launched that week. 7720.com is a four-digit numeric, and eventspaces.com was caught on September 14 and sold at the catch auction three days later.
Premium Domain Intelligence
Selected .com expirations and drop-catches detected from September 15 to September 20 by DomainKits Changes Monitor.
Notable Expirations
Each name below was checked against registry records on September 22 and was still on an expiry-hold nameserver. The registry can extend a .com expiration date by a year automatically, so a later expiration date alone does not mean the name was renewed. Three higher-ranked names were left out because they are back on ordinary nameservers.
| Domain | Length | Original creation year | Registrar | Detected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| cjh.com | 3L | 1999 | 22net | Sep 17 |
| winezone.com | 8L | 1995 | Network Solutions | Sep 17 |
| nicelife.com | 8L | 1997 | NameBright | Sep 15 |
| stylebox.com | 8L | 2002 | Mesh Digital | Sep 15 |
| karoma.com | 6L | 2003 | Register.com | Sep 16 |
Three three-letter .com names went onto expiry-hold nameservers this week; the previous issue’s window had none. Two have since been renewed. slj.com now expires five years out and is back on its own nameservers, and ijn.com is back on its registrar’s nameservers. cjh.com is still on hold. All three had their expiration date pushed back one year when they were detected, which happens automatically, so that date could not tell the renewed names from the one that was not.
Notable Drop-Catches
A catch creates a new registration, so each name below was created during the report week. Four other detections had 2025 creation dates and were left out.
| Domain | Caught by | Date |
|---|---|---|
| toyoko.com | DropCatch | Sep 15 |
| armstock.com | DropCatch | Sep 17 |
| makeroot.com | Nom Infinitum | Sep 17 |
| cowoka.com | Cosmotown | Sep 18 |
| lamene.com | PacificDomains | Sep 19 |
Names Followed From Earlier Issues
- biotime.com, snapdog.com. Now on Afternic and Atom.com respectively, listed for sale; neither was deleted.
- talkbot.com. Back on its previous nameservers September 15; off the list.
- leasehub.com, homenote.com, fonari.com, sebino.com. Still on renewal holds.
- lifepower.com. Pending delete since September 18.
- nosesa.com, remimi.com, galibi.com. Still in redemption.
- ujg.com, pulselab.com, magicbar.com. Unchanged.
- Five names followed since August are dropped after four unchanged issues.
Weekly Insight
A registration record shows what a new name is for only through where it points, and only as far as that goes. The 960 jev names, registered through 30 registrars after one announcement, were placed three ways within days: over half on nameservers run by registrars, a third on marketplace nameservers, and the rest, about a tenth, mostly on Cloudflare. The 233 outreach names, registered in one batch, point the same way from the first day. The records show the placement, not the purpose or the people behind it. Explore the current registration records in DomainKits.
Method Notes
- Revised figures. Both weeks use the September 22 dataset. Records added since the previous issue raised the prior week by 961 on .app, 733 on .xyz, 319 on .com, 37 on .net, 16 on .dev and 5 on .org.
- Two datasets. The overview uses the daily trend series. Everything else uses the registration records.
- Keyword counts. Word-based, deduplicated by domain, pure-letter .com only.
- Monitoring dates. Expirations and drop-catches were detected September 15 to 20. The ranked change feed used to select rows starts on September 15. Local change snapshots for Monday September 14 were reviewed separately; they contain no three-letter .com expirations and nothing that changes the rows printed.
- Correction. The September 15 issue listed gymdock.com as a drop-catch for that week. Its registration dates from September 2025, so it should not have been included. The other four names in that table were registered that week and stand.
- Nameservers. These show DNS delegation only, not a site, an owner or an intent.
Data Sources: Sales: collected public reports; the selected table identifies the platform named in each report and the venue’s own records were checked against it. Registration and trend data: DomainKits. Domain changes: DomainKits Changes. For reference only, not investment advice.
Published by: ABTdomain