Slashdot Mirror
Google Makes $500M a Year On Typos
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on an analysis by Harvard researchers that suggests Google rakes in half a billion dollars annually from advertising that appears on typosquatting domains. They estimate that 60 per cent of typosquatting pages use Google ads, but the advertising giant declined to discuss whether it should be working with such pages."
Slashdot got a nickel for every typo...
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I'm sure that Google requires as a condition of their AdSense program, your site contains at least some content. They manually review sites before you get accepted into the AdSense program.
Unless of course you use their Domain Parking option.
Someone on Google saw some new Internet service and said "I wish I had $0.01 for each typo the teens make." Someone else said "You know, that's a really, really good idea. Let's do it."
That's not Google though, that's the people who registered the typo domains that are proactively making this happen. Google's ad service just might be what they use to recoup their registration/squatting fees. Google's not actively registering these sites and putting up ads to get money off of typos, rather someone else is doing that shady practice and sharing the profits with Google. Since Google makes their AdWords product easy to use and profit off of, they most likely use them and Google never realizes it until:
A Google spokesperson pointed out that the company will remove ads from typo domains if the owner of a site with a trademarked name makes a complaint, but declined to discuss the research in more detail.
Hate to sound like a fanboy on this one but Google's profits are from just offering an ad service. That's about as far as their evil goes here, they're even willing to kill those profits if the legit domain complains to them about the typo squatter.
My work here is dung.
Once or twice in my life I have landed at a domain squatter's site due to a typo. Hundreds or thousands of times I have landed there due to links to sites that used to be something but are now run by the squatters.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.