Via McAfee:
Key Findings
In an effort to further quantify and understand this phenomenon, McAfee studied 1.9 million typographical variations of 2,771 of the most popular and well known Web sites. Of these, we found 127,381 suspected typo-squatters.
Among McAfee’s key findings are the following:
* Typo-squatting is vast and common, affecting every segment of the Web. 7.2% of the possible typographical errors we studied were actively squatting. In other words, a typical consumer who misspells a popular Web site URL has a 1 in 14 chance of landing at a likely typo-squatter site.
* The five most highly squatted categories are game sites (14.0%), airlines (11.4%), main stream media company sites (10.8%), adult sites (10.2%) and technology and Web 2.0 related sites (9.6%).
* Children’s sites are highly targeted by typo squatters. The average for the category is 8.4% and 24 of the top most squatted sites are children’s properties for kids 12 and under. Add in sites like MySpace and Miniclip and more than 60 of the top most squatted sites are properties that appeal to the 18 and under demographic.
* Squatters follow consumer crowds. Popular, consumer-focused Web sites typically attract more squatters than business to business sites or niche content sites.
* The incidence of pornographic content on non-adult typo-squatted sites is just 2.4%, suggesting improvement since previous studies by other researchers.
* Automated ad syndication services like Google’s AdSense enable a significant minority of typo-squatter sites to generate revenue. Google-enabled advertising shows up on 19.3% of all suspected typo-squatter sites in this study. Yahoo-enabled advertising shows up on 4.4% of all suspected typo-squatter sites.
* The increasing use of automation to buy and sell vast numbers of domains, combined with a 5-day free trial (known as “tasting”?) for new registrations to top level domains like dot-com appear to be two significant factors in the rapid growth of typo-squatting.
* At 3.4%, sites popular outside the U.S. are less than half as likely to be typo-squatted as overall sites.
* The five non-U.S. countries most likely to have popular sites squatted are the United Kingdom (7.7%), Portugal (6.5%), Spain (5.9%), France (5.4%), and Italy (4.1%).
* The five non-U.S. countries least likely to have popular sites squatted are the Netherlands (1.5%), Israel (1.1%), Denmark (1.0%), Brazil (0.9%) and Finland (0.1%).
* The top five parking companies, ranked by the percentage of squatters parked by them, are Information (28.5%), Hitfarm (11.3%), Domainsponsor (2.9%), Sedo (2.5%) and GoDaddy (2.3%). Together, the top five park 47.5% of the squatters we discovered.
They end up with this:
Ultimately, in our view, typo-squatters fail the added-value test. Parked typo sites filled with pay-per click ads don’t help the consumer find the site he was actually looking for. And they don’t help the company build and brand their product in the way they see fit.
Lots and lots of wrong assumptions here and let’s not forget Apple using iPhone long after the brand was established by other parties (money talks) and MS “right of dot” typosquatting practices in IE. Won’t get into most but let’s touch on some points shall we? So what is more valuable, a 404 error page with no content or links, or paid relevant links of the keywords within the domain name? Why the double standards that typos in search engines can be monetized (and promoted in this article as a solution) versus domain owners who cannot monetize those same terms as domain names?
I’m not for or against typosquatting however after all the years in the business I have not heard compelling enough arguments that search keywords within domain names should be treated differently then search keywords within search engines. . The other issue here is why it is a problem? understanding fundamentals is most important. The issue rises because of consumer confusion so why aren’t there solutions to fix a confusing domain rather then transfer a domain to complainant? In real estate, if you over build your house on your neighbors’ lawn and dispute arises, the courts will not transfer your house to the neighbor but will step in to fix the problem, mainly either give yo ua penalty or direction what to do to avoid/fix the issue. Why can’t it work for domain names? Today when we automate thousands of domains it is not possible to look at them on a per domain basis and know exactly which keywords reside on each, nor understand per domain the exact rights of each trademark owner. What about domain owners of large generic domain names who accidentally step on someone’s else’s rights? Where is the solution to those?
Bottom line is trademark rights and the internet is like oil and water - they don’t mix well. In a global economy it is absurd to think a business entity in Denmark should know the business of another in Taiwan and avoid using an identical or similar domain name and related industry on the web because some other companies across the world is doing the same.
……..”Why the double standards that typos in search engines can be monetized (and promoted in this article as a solution) versus domain owners who cannot monetize those same terms as domain names?”
You are absolutely correct!!!! It is interesting that McAfee commissioned this research/report. I’m not aware of any of their products that have anything to do with the monetization of domains. They are a security company that competes with Symanntic among others.