What’s in a name? Well, quite a lot if it is sufficiently similar to someone else’s! The downside is when the ‘someone else’ is you and your visitor’s typos are taking them elsewhere.
Cameroon Corners Market on Online Typos!
Typo domain names have been popular for some time as a way of exploiting those frustrating slips of the keyboard when typing urls. One of the biggest beneficiaries of typo domains is – believe it or not – the country of Cameroon. With a TLD of .cm, a lot of people have been snaffling up Cameroon domains to capitalise on the common typo when attempting to access a .com domain. This .cm address then forwards you to the main business site of the unscrupulous operator. Don’t believe me? Type in www.google.cm and then marvel at how much that domain name must be worth to the company that owns it.
Although Cameroon is more than aware of the way their domain names are being exploited, as big business is quite happy to spend huge amounts in accessing these domains, it is not hard to understand why the practice goes ahead.
Domain Name Typos Mean Big Business
Typo domain names are big business because many of these carefully selected domains can be designed to point to landing pages of sponsored links. Every time the visitor clicks, the webmaster gets paid. Therefore, finding typo domains close to the big players on the internet can be extremely lucrative for little effort, riding the coat-tails of someone else’s online success.
Because of this, typo domain names themselves are now changing hands for massive amounts, something that only used to happen for the best of the legitimate domains. MySpac.com was sold in 2005 for US$31,600. The benefits of owning that domain are obvious, and as social networking continues its rise into the stratosphere, expect this domain to only increase in value.
Protect Your Brand from Domain Typos
This is why certain big players online are securing their brand against this kind of activity by using a specialist domain registrar to identify the most dangerous typo domains related to their core domain, and registering them for themselves before anyone else does. Of course, these domains can then point to the core site, adding extra value for their customers by correcting their url typos for them.
This level of the typo domain practice is not a major problem for small business, but there is one other aspect that is just as problematic for everyone and is perfectly legitimate. Global domain name similarity can be a big problem for the small company and I discuss the pitfalls and possible remedies in a separate article, here.
But if you are concerned about typo domains affecting your business, or if you only want to identify common typos related to your address in order to provide a redirect service for your customers, talk to your domain registrar who will be able to help you with a strategy to protect and enhance your brand.
