The Big Business Of Typos

Surprises

from the domane-names dept

There’s no doubt that 2006 was a hot year for the domain name speculation business. The address diamond.com sold for $7.5 million this year, tying the price that business.com sold for during the last business. And of course the derivative business of typosquatting was also quite hot, with many trying to get into the act of buying up domain names that are just a letter or two different from a common brand. So it’s not surprising that the two trends came together, resulting in the address mortage.com getting sold for $242,000, the 23rd biggest sale of the year (even though Morgage.com seems like the more likely typo). All of these domain name purchases seem rather risky, but the big prices being paid for typos seem even more so, considering all of the efforts to stamp them out, and prevent users from accidentally surfing towards them.