When Google becomes Goggle: Hundreds of millions of dollars lost because of typosquatting (spelling mistakes)

A new type of scam starts to grow acoss the web. More and more websites having names similar to those owned by prestigious companies like Google and Facebook appear on the Internet. And the resemblance is not a coincidence but a way to make money from users who make typing errors. More specifically, there are lot of people who buy typosquatting sites -domain names spelled similarly to those of real companies- and make profit from so-called “fat-fingered Internet users”, i.e. those who wrongly type the company name, Bloomberg Business Week writes.

In October, the authorities rejected a complaint filed by Google against 3 typosquatting sites, goggle.com, goggle.net and goggle.org. The arbitration board said this type of problem is not in their jurisdiction. The typosquatting websites registered to Barbados businessman David Csumrik, redirects users to a survey that promises the possibility of winning prizes, e.g. iPads. But the visitors do not win any prize, instead get their email to be filled with spam.

Hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain

Writing typos cause troubles of hundreds of millions of dollars for corporations. According to a 2010 study conducted by consulting firm Fair Winds from Washignton, the websites that profit from these writing mistakes have caused damages of over $285 million yearly to the 250-most popular real wesites.

“The typosquatting is regarded as an increasing cyber crime. A top website can attract more than a thousand of typosquatting sites,” said Benjamin G. Edelman, a professor at Harvard University.

“Similar names cause confusion among customers and this can seriously affect a company operating on the Internet,” said Chris Schwerzler, director of the Weather Underground.
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Hundreds of thousands of unique visitors for typosquatting site Goggle.com

The owners of companies can avoid the typosquatting problem if buying any similar spelled domain and can also sue those who profit from spelling mistakes.

But the trial might be lengthy, money and time-consuming and does not always bring the desired results. This is because it is very difficult to prove that those who bought typosquatting domains can be blamed of bad faith.

Typosquatting domains can have hundreds of thousands of unique users each month. In September, Goggle.com claimed more than 824,850 unique visitors in the U.S.
It looks like Google removed Goggle.com from the search index, but still the “clone” website is not visibly affected.

Another common mistake is when the users type faecbook instead of facebook.