How TLD Radar works

Today a web address ends in something like .com, .org, or a country code. ICANN calls the letters after the dot the string. ICANN opens application rounds rarely (the last was in 2012), and organizations can apply to run an entirely new extension of their own. The application fee alone is $227,000 per TLD, so an application is a serious signal of intent.

ICANN kept the applications private until Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC, when it published them all at once. Before that, this record was built from public announcements, catalogs and reporting. Now it follows ICANN’s list, and every entry links to its source.

Every entry says where it stands. Confirmed: the application is on ICANN’s list. Backup (ICANN’s term: replacement string): a string an applicant named as the one it could switch to. Deactivated backup: ICANN will not let that switch happen, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. Switched: the applicant moved its application to its backup during the replacement period, 8 to 21 October. IDN variant: another written form of a string in a non-Latin script, such as the traditional Chinese spelling of a simplified one. Abandoned: an applicant announced the string before Reveal Day, and it is not on ICANN’s list under that applicant.

Each TLD carries one number: an AI score from 1 to 100 on one fixed scale. .com is scored on it like every other TLD, and each TLD’s page shows .com’s score beside its own. It’s a judgment of how much a TLD is worth building a name on: its clarity, its pull, and who it’s genuinely for.

The score comes from a written scoring guide, applied the same way to every string. When we change the guide, it gets a new version number and we score again. On 8 October 2026 every score on the record used version r3. The verdict under a score is built only from what the model recorded when it scored.

Two AI models made those scores: claude-fable-5 scored 718 strings between 15 August and 1 September 2026, and claude-fable-5-1 scored the other 1,018 between 8 September and 7 October. Each TLD’s page names the model and the date next to its score.

A score stays fixed until the guide changes. It doesn’t move day to day.

One company often applies through several legal entities: Identity Digital applies through 28. We count them as one company when their ICANN applications name the same parent or controller, or one names the other as its parent. Each company’s page quotes what each entity told ICANN about its parent or controller, with a link to the application on ICANN’s site. When a company applied through one entity whose name doesn’t say who owns it, and ICANN’s answers do, its page quotes that answer too.

Some separate companies are tied in other ways: a shareholding, the same director, the same phone number. A company’s page lists them as related companies, each with the source that says so. Their applications are not counted as that company’s.

We publish what a source says, not what we conclude from it. A tie we can only infer, however likely, stays off the record.

This is a record meant to be cited, so it’s corrected in public. Every change (a status moving, a fact being fixed) is logged on the changelog with the evidence behind it, and nothing is quietly edited away.

If something about an application ever has to be removed, it is replaced with a note that it was removed and when. The fact that a change to an application happened always stays on the record.

If you’re an applicant and something here is wrong, or you’d like your entry reviewed, write to hello@namedesk.app. Corrections are welcome and handled in the open.