Google may be benefiting from typosquatting

A recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard reveals that Google may be earning as much as $500 million a year from typosquatting. How could this be so?

Recall that typosquatting is the registration of misspelled domaina to siphon traffic from more popular websites. The study tracked the 3264 most popular websites and found that each one had an average of 280 typosquatting domains.

While Google itself doesn’t own any of these names, the registrants often display Google AdSense advertisements on the typo-names. The researchers behind the study suggest that as many as 60% of these rogue sites display the Mountain View company’s ads, so Google is indirectly benefiting from trademark infringement.