MS Researchers find that typo-squatters are gaming Google

by on December 19, 2005

Hmm, I didn’t know about this, but sounds interesting. Researchers at Microsoft have blown the lid off of a large-scale, typo-squatting scheme that uses multi-layer URL redirection to game Google’s AdSense for domains program. At least that’s what eWeek’s Ryan Naraine is reporting. Thanks to Neowin for linking to that.

  • Jake
    Any program that pays cash gets gamed. It's a cost of business and a fact of life.
  • /pd
    11 months ago, in afar and distance community this was said :" Yes, for links exchange, verify the cache and the backlinks of the page. With this technics, we have made a proof of concept of this google’s bug. That must be know of all and Google must solve this tricks."
  • pwb
    How is this "getting gamed"?
  • A recent business2 article mentioned that as much as 10% of google's adwords revenue comes from typo squaters. The business suits from Yahoo were busy pampering them.
    Poor Google what else can it do, other than overlook squatter misdoings, just like it decided to dilute its search relavance for AOL.
  • I recently complained to the Google adwords people
    about this. I wanted to block all adwords traffic from
    the domain park service ( coming from oingo.com ).
    They said I had to block every individual domain!
    There are lots of domains that are typosquatted
    trademarked names. No way to block it globally!
    Not only that, the traffic from the typosquatted
    domains was of low quality, so it is not worth my
    dime to get people who can't spell to my site!

    The main part of Google's reply was -

    I see that your Campaign #1 is currently
    opted-in to both the Search
    Network, and the Content Network.
    If you are concerned with the sites that
    your ad may be appearing on, you could
    consider opting out of these
    networks, and show your ad on Google's
    search site only.

    Which in my mind defeats the purpose of adwords.
    I want my ads to appear next to relevant content
    and not some paid search listing on a typosquatted parked domain!
  • domovoi
    Of course a system is going to get gamed, but don't you agree that the owners of said system are morally obligated to make a reasonable effort to stop such gaming, even if they profit from it? If Google doesn't do anything about these scams, how does it jive with their "do no evil" mantra?
  • Christopher Coulter
    Where was everyone when this was major happening like 2 years ago? All the pretyy colored balls, and everyone was so wrapped up in punch-drunk-Google-love. Amazing, 1-2 years after the skeptics like Andrew, Nick and JCD pick it up, does it filter down.
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