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Typos Could Be Making Google $500 Million a Year

by Caleb Johnson on February 18, 2010 at 05:15 PM

Google makes about $500 million a year in advertising revenue from deceptive Web sites that target typos, according to New Scientist. It's the result of a trend called "typosquatting," a practice wherein people register domain names that are mere letters away from those of popular sites (e.g., 'Switcjed.com' instead of 'Switched.com'). When somebody hits the wrong key and unintentionally visits such a site, the owners profit from whatever advertisements are placed on the page. Guess who else profits from those ads? Yep, Google. According to a study (pdf) done by Tyler Moore and Benjamin Edelman of Harvard, Google supplies ads for about 60-percent of those deceptive sites.

While Google technically isn't intentionally profiting from this deception, Moore and Edelman say the company could do more to prevent the practice. They say some individuals operate thousands of deceptive domains, meaning they'd be pretty easy to target and shut down. Google does provide a way for users to report typosquatters, but watch those keystrokes; the deceptive sites are still rampant. [From: New Scientist]
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Tags: advertising, domainnames, ethics, google, money, top, typo, typos, web

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