Harvard Study Finds Typos Give Google $500 Million a Year

A small part of Google's $23 billion in revenue comes from typos, Harvard researchers have found. Tyler Moore and Benjamin Edelman of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Harvard Business School, respectively, studied the most popular .com sites, finding that each had about 280 registered typo domains associated with it, a "typo domain" being a domain that could feasibly be created from attempting to type the actual domain name (blogpot.com is one of our favorite examples). The researchers looked at the advertising practices on these sites, and extrapolated from average advertising revenue for Google pay-per-click (PPC) ads to estimate the amount of revenue that Google gets from ads on these "typosquatting" sites.

The $500 million figure they came up with is impressive enough, but Moore and Edelman also found that typo domains that feature only ads, no other links, have higher click-through and conversion rates, suggesting that the half-billion estimate may be too low. The full study of typosquatting and its implications found no relationship between the difficulty of spelling a word and the prevalence of typo sites, but did determine that "high PPC prices spur typosquatting registrations in the corresponding categories." Still, the study emphasizes "the feasibility of significantly reducing typosquatting" due to its high concentration among specific IDs and servers: nearly 76% of typosquatting sites were registered to the same 10 advertiser IDs.

The ACPA was created in 1999 to protect organizations from online imitators, but Moore and Edelman's research suggests that barely 5% of typo domains are being prosecuted under this act or UDRP. As a result of the ineffectiveness of these measures, the researchers feel that online advertising platforms are in the best position to launch an effective crackdown on typo domains: "Because ad platforms are the primary or sole source of revenue for these typo domains, we believe ad platforms are well-positioned to substantially reduce typosquatting." Identifying ad platforms as "least-cost avoiders, able to prevent typosquatting with less e ffort than any other party," Moore and Edelman essentially ask Google to put an end to the practice of typosquatting by enforcing stricter advertising regulations. But with $500 million coming in from the practice, why would Google want to stop it?

Google's dominance has always been scary, but the fact that typos can create more revenue for the company than what as many as a dozen countries are worth is even scarier. If you'll excuse us, though, we need to check our gmail now.