Source: BrandShelter News
Date: March 4, 2010

Averaged 280 typo domains are allocated to each of the 3,264 most popular .COM web sites ranked by Alexa.com. This is the conclusion of the study “Measuring the Perpetrators and Funders of Typosquatting"carried out by the two Harvard scientists Tyler Moore (Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) and Benjamin Edelman (Harvard Business School).

The term typosquatting describes the registration of domains with typos or phonetic misspellings, which are similar to well-known internet addresses, e.g. examble.com as typo domain for example.com. Internet users, which enter the mistyped domain name into the browser, often reach a parked typo domain. Because of these accidental visitors, the owner of this typo domain generates money, e.g. when the misrouted visitors click the Google Ads on the typo web site. Well established web sites in particular are a popular object of typosquatting: For example, 1.865 typo domains aim at the web site hotels.com according to the study.

For the .COM domains analyzed in their survey, the scientists Edelman and Moore created a list of possible typos. They compared this list with all 81 million registered .COM domains. The result were 1.9 million possible typo domains among all registered .COM names. With a manual comparison of a sample of these typo candidates followed by an estimation procedure, the scientists reached a final result of 938,000 likely typo domains for the 3,264 analyzed .COM web sites consisting of at least five characters. However, the effective number of typo domains could be even higher: Edelman's and Moores' survey excluded typo domains with typos in the domain ending (e.g. .CO or .CM).

The Harvard academics analyzed the source of revenue of more than 285,000 of the identified typo domains and discovered a tendency of concentration of the typo business: They detected that 80 percent of the sites use pay-per-click ads. These ads often promote the correctly written domain and its competitors. This means, the owners of domains, which are affected by typosquatting, partly finance the causers of the abuse with their ads. Furthermore, the scientists revealed that especially the ad programs of Google and Yahoo are used for pay-per-click ads. The fact that 63 percent of the typo domains with Google ads could be allocated to altogether five ad accounts, was also valued as a sign for the concentration of the business by the Harvard academics.

Sources:
http://www.benedelman.org/typosquatting/typosquatting.pdf
http://www.intern.de/news/neue--meldungen/--201002186952.html

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