A new report done by two Harvard scientists reveals that Google may earn up to 500 million dollars a year because of typosquatting.
Typosquatting is what they call it when somebody on purpose registers a domain that looks a lot like something else, like Googel.com (notice the misspelling). So if you go to googel.com because you happen to switch two letters, you will end up at a website most likely with Google AdSense on it. Now, don’t even bother testing googel.com as it just redirects to the real google.com, but there are many other domains out there that does not redirect.
Typosquatters often use Google AdSense to put ads on such domains, just to earn a quick buck. When they earn money from the ads, Google gets a cut. And that cut, is estimated to earn Google up to $500 million a year.
The two Harvard scientist, Tyler Moore and Benjamin Edelman, estimates that each of the 3,264 most popular domains have around 280 misspelled domains, where one or more letters are wrong. They also estimates that up to 68 million Internet users, each day, ends up at such a misspelled domain name, from which 60% of the domains run ads from Google AdSense/AdWords.
Google will not comment on the report but they emphasize that they do remove their ads from misspelled websites if they receive complaints over it.
It’s not only Google making money on this, but also other providers of ad networks such as Yahoo and Ask.com.
If you think about it , they earn money from alot of aspects regarding the webspace.
That is an insane amount of money! I bought a misspelled domain once – didn’t really do that much for me.
.-= Tom | Build That List´s last blog ..The Aweber Code….And Why You Need To Promote It! =-.
Thats a great amount of money! But as far as I have observed, Google purchases most of the TYPO domains and they are redirected to the Homepage of Google. [ I don’t really have any idea how Google acquire s this domains, by Sueing the owners or by purchasing the domains]
.-= Rohit Sane´s last blog ..How to create Good META Description tags for better SEO =-.
Yes – Google might buy most of the typo domains themselves if they are related to Google – and that’s also a good idea. But there are thousands of other popular websites out there, that Google has no interest in buying typo domains for. Like TechPatio.com 😀 Somebody could register TechhPatio.com and earn ads money whenever somebody types the address wrong and goes to the other site…
.-= Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Friday Flick Find: High Speed Car Chase In Google Earth =-.
Its really a big amount that google earn by this tips. Well Klaus can you explain me what is the typo domain?
.-= chandan´s last blog ..Advice and tips on work at home =-.
Wow! I’m clearly in the wrong job!
I’m surprised that Google doesn’t go after them with a lawsuit and try to take over the domain for 100% of the advertising clicks?
Google earns huge money with typo websites. These sites gets huge traffic and they earn good money by putting adsense and other ads on their pages.
Yes there are many typo names blog where the Google or the people who have those bolgs place adds and earn a good amount of money.Actually its a wrong thing what i personally feel .As the visitor in not willing to be on that site .i think this is also an another way of earning money by the website owners.
hmmm interesting
That’s very interesting. I’ve never thought about this, but then again I’m quite new to this online marketing world. I love the creativity that people/companies have when it comes to making money and google is certainly not an exception.