Is typosquatting damaging your brand?

Typosquatting is a term given to the questionable practice of a person or entity registering domain names that are extremely close to brandable, trademarked names or names that are very close to that of celebrities in an effort to profit from web user’s mistakes in typing the wrong URL in their address bar. Typosquatters will often populate the page that the domain name points to with ads that they hope will be clicked on by the internet users. The practice of typosquatting has been the subject of hot debate and even court action in the last few years, with corporations sending cease and desist letters to typosquatting individuals who own the names. If the cease and desist letters go unanswered, they generally opt for a more direct approach and attempt to have the typosquatted domain name pulled from the hosting company and sometimes even sue the owners for the right to the domain.

However, there has been a collective group of concerned individuals that have begun to point out that the large search engines, mainly Google and MSN, are benefiting from typosquatting on a much larger and potentially much more damaging scale than that of independent website publishers. Many internet users will use a search bar and not the browser address bar to type in the domain name they are looking for, complete with the .com, .net or other TLD. When the search engine produces results, it also produces sponsored links above the closest intended result that the search engine believes that the user had originally wanted. When questioned about the tactics, the search engines are quick to point out that they offer a link to the most relevant website that they believe that the user is looking for, but they do this deceitfully. These relevant results are located under up to five full sponsored ads, almost halfway down the page, so it is highly likely that the internet user will click on one of those ads instead of the page they intended to go to first, generating potentially billions per year in revenue for the search engines.

But this practice is continually hushed to the majority of internet users who are often unaware that what they believe are trusted links are actually paid ads that generate revenue. Meanwhile, small independent typosquatters are continually hounded for their practice unabashedly. While the practice of going after the typosquatters is probably legitimate as well, common sense points out that the search engines shouldn’t be monetizing their version of the practice, either. Time will only tell if any legislation will be enacted against them to stop the practice, however, but for now it looks as if none is in motion.

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