This week in domain intelligence:
- A major AI launch drew a burst of .com registrations, most of it within two days.
- Few of those names mention the company or agents, far fewer than for a rival assistant launched weeks earlier.
- Registrants’ attention stayed on last week’s wave, now in its second week.
- Two large template sets, each registered within days and mostly through one registrar, look like batch registrations.
- Platform-published auction results lead the selected sales, alongside two names tied to last week’s wave.
Domain Registration Intelligence
Weekly Registration Overview
New domain registrations from September 28 to October 4, 2026, compared with September 21 to September 27, on data available October 6. Source: DomainKits Trends.
| TLD | Sep 28-Oct 4 total | Daily avg | Sep 21-27 total | Daily avg | Daily avg change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .com | 1,019,629 | 145,661 | 981,932 | 140,276 | +5,385 |
| .org | 58,731 | 8,390 | 56,209 | 8,030 | +360 |
| .net | 53,408 | 7,630 | 52,928 | 7,561 | +69 |
| .app | 33,200 | 4,743 | 28,933 | 4,133 | +610 |
| .dev | 10,380 | 1,483 | 8,839 | 1,263 | +220 |
| .xyz | 228,998 | 32,714 | 226,131 | 32,304 | +410 |
Weekly registrations in .app and .dev rise and fall, but their totals have grown in each of the past twelve weeks: .app by 237,346 domains to 1,696,669 and .dev by 73,948 to 777,928.
Hot Keywords
September 7 to October 4, 2026. Pure-letter .com registrations only. Of the twenty highest-volume keywords, the two largest weekly gainers and the three largest decliners by percentage. Source: DomainKits Trends.
| Keyword | Sep 7-13 | Sep 14-20 | Sep 21-27 | Sep 28-Oct 4 | W-o-W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| studio | 4,714 | 4,612 | 4,793 | 5,395 | +12.6% |
| pro | 3,806 | 3,894 | 3,975 | 4,310 | +8.4% |
| go | 2,618 | 2,653 | 2,773 | 2,377 | -14.3% |
| solutions | 3,482 | 3,528 | 3,610 | 3,506 | -2.9% |
| hub | 3,425 | 3,375 | 3,540 | 3,469 | -2.0% |
Emerging .com Keywords
The five largest emerging keywords this week are super, slot, song, parking and situs. Emerging means at least 100 registrations in the report week and at least twice the mean of the prior three weeks; a keyword that shares most of its names with a higher one is folded into it. Pure-letter .com registrations only, deduplicated by domain. Source: DomainKits NRDS.
| Keyword | Prior 3-week avg | Report week | vs. avg | Peak day share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| super | 1,016 | 2,930 | +188% | 26% |
| slot | 536 | 1,759 | +228% | 24% |
| song | 235 | 1,226 | +422% | 80% |
| parking | 107 | 956 | +796% | 43% |
| situs | 59 | 904 | +1,441% | 33% |
super comes from the superintelligence names; the full story is in three DomainKits posts: the first days, the new .si names and the .com names built on SI.
slot and situs carry a broad run of Indonesian gambling names, such as slotgacorkencang, registered through many registrars.
song and parking each rest mainly on one batch: listingsong names registered on October 1 through OpusDNS, and names pairing a truck term with parking, such as securerigparking, registered from October 1 to 4, nearly all through Dominet (HK) Limited. A shared template, tight timing and a common registrar mark both as suspected batch registrations worth a security team’s attention; they do not establish a single registrant.
dots, launched by OpenAI on September 29, did not make the five while registrants stayed busy with superintelligence: .com registrations answered with a burst that faded within two days. Few of the new names were built around the product, with twelve mentioning OpenAI or ChatGPT, while names pairing muse with Meta or agent ran to the hundreds in the first days of Meta’s Muse agent three weeks earlier.
Daily pure-letter .com registrations from each launch day:
| Day | dots, from Sep 29 | muse, from Sep 8 |
|---|---|---|
| Prior three weeks, daily avg | 5 | 134 |
| Day 1 | 283 | 164 |
| Day 2 | 127 | 333 |
| Day 3 | 30 | 280 |
| Day 4 | 24 | 276 |
| Day 5 | 25 | 255 |
| Day 6 | 27 | 130 |
| First six days | 516 | 1,438 |
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
The five highest-priced sales reported for September 28 to October 4 whose venue is confirmed: four by the platform’s own published results, and the Afternic sale by the seller. Dates are the sale dates assigned by the reports, not publication or settlement dates.
| Domain | Price | Platform | Reported sale date |
|---|---|---|---|
| nowgoal.com | $36,000 | DropCatch | Oct 2 |
| paylo.com | $20,101 | DropCatch | Sep 29 |
| superintelligence.app | $9,495 | Afternic | Sep 30 |
| metrowest.com | $8,284 | DropCatch | Sep 30 |
| cosmic.si | $7,995 | Sedo | Oct 1 |
The week’s sales reports also include several other .si names.
Premium Domain Intelligence
Selected .com expirations and drop-catches detected from September 28 to October 4 by DomainKits Changes Monitor.
Notable Expirations
Still on expiry-hold nameservers at a registry check on October 6; the registry advances a .com expiration date by a year automatically, so that date alone does not mean a renewal.
| Domain | Length | Original creation year | Registrar | Detected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qda.com | 3L | 1999 | eName | Oct 3 |
| usemod.com | 6L | 1999 | Network Solutions | Oct 1 |
| airpin.com | 6L | 2003 | Network Solutions | Oct 2 |
| liststar.com | 8L | 1996 | Tucows | Sep 30 |
| easysave.com | 8L | 1997 | Network Solutions | Oct 1 |
Notable Drop-Catches
Each name was re-registered during the week.
| Domain | Caught by | Date |
|---|---|---|
| gemvideo.com | SnapNames | Sep 29 |
| omgwine.com | SnapNames | Oct 2 |
| keyrelay.com | SnapNames | Oct 3 |
| coinmake.com | DropCatch | Oct 4 |
| govare.com | DropCatch | Oct 4 |
Names Followed From Earlier Issues
- galibi.com. Deleted and caught by Gname on October 1.
- lifepower.com. Reported sold at DropCatch for $6,805 on September 28, four days after the catch; closed.
- tey.com. Renewed to 2028 and back on its earlier nameservers on October 3; off the list.
Weekly Insight
For brand teams, the size of a launch-day burst matters less than the few names that carry the company’s name, and those can be checked within days of registration. Search the week’s dots names in DomainKits NRDS.
Method Notes
- Revised figures. Both weeks use the October 6 dataset. Records added since the previous issue raised the prior week by 1,201 on .app, 302 on .com, 253 on .dev, 46 on .net, 33 on .xyz and 6 on .org.
- Datasets. The overview uses the daily trend series; keyword counts use the registration records.
- Keyword counts. Word-based, deduplicated by domain, pure-letter .com only.
- Monitoring dates. Expirations and drop-catches were detected September 28 to October 4.
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. For reference only, not investment advice.
Published by: ABTdomain