Google Advertising News - Why Typos Aren't Going Away

Google claims it discourages this practice. Web addresses that violate trademarks are not allowed to use Google's network; nor do its guidelines permit AdSense affiliates to set up web pages specifically for the display of ads, regardless of whether or not the page's content is relevant to the ads. Nevertheless, many typoed domain names are apparently part of Google's advertising network. The Washington Post article found 38 typos of Earthlink's domain name parked at a Google-owned service that serves Google ads.

How does Google reconcile this practice with the fact that it seems to be violating its own guidelines? It doesn't fit with Google's "do no evil" motto. Then again, it's hardly alone. Yahoo! runs a similar service.

Is there anything positive about typosquatting? Well, some typosquatters do link to the site that the searcher may have originally been trying to reach. And those who run domain name parking services claim that the pages work as alternatives to search engines, helping people to find what they're looking for in among all those ads.

Typosquatters certainly make money from it. Ron Jackson, publisher of DNJournal.com which covers the domain name industry, said in an interview that "I know quite a few guys making over a million dollars a year from advertising on their domains...It's like a 24-hour money-printing machine." Granted, not all that money is being made by typosquatters, but with the possibly of that kind of revenue, it's no wonder that the practice has become so pervasive.

And -- let's face it -- the search engines make money from it too. No one is saying how much, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview that "It's a lot of money." Analysts estimate that just under half of Google's $6 billion in revenue last year came from affiliate advertising sites. No one knows how many of those sites are typosquatter domains, but if the number is significant, one can understand why it seems as if Google isn't working too hard to get rid of this "problem."