"Available" doesn't mean you can buy it

During testing we ran into a short name, woit.app. A standard RDAP check — the protocol domain registries use to honestly answer "is this domain registered" — said "not registered." By every formal signal, the domain was available.

But it couldn’t be bought

The registry for the .app zone (run by Google) reserves short, pleasant-sounding names as premium — formally they aren’t "registered" to anyone in the usual sense, but you also can’t buy them at the standard price through normal registration: the registry either withholds them from sale entirely or sells them at a separate, often steeply inflated price. RDAP gives no indication of this — from the protocol’s point of view the domain is simply "available," and that’s a literally honest answer, just an incomplete one for the question "can I buy it."

What we did

First, we added a warning right in the results: available domains four letters or shorter now carry a note that the name might be a registry premium reservation. Second, we’re adding another layer of checking — a direct query to the registrar (reg.ru), which answers not "is the domain formally registered" but "can I actually buy it through them right now." This layer isn’t wired up for every operation yet — part of the registrar’s functionality requires a separate partner agreement on their end, and we’re in that process.

What to do as a reader

If you see "available" on a short domain (2–4 letters) in a trendy zone like .app, .ai, or .io — don’t rush to build a brand, a storefront sign, and an ad campaign around it. Go to the registrar’s own site and try adding the domain to your cart for real: if the price is abnormally high or the purchase isn’t available at all, that’s the premium reservation RDAP stays silent about.