I’m sick with a fever and my daughter is home from kindergarten with pneumonia so I’m kind of kicking back my feet a bit and catching up on some reading.  This morning I was browsing around the halls of Reddit when I noticed this fascinating article from New Scientist that claims Google pulls in half a BILLION dollars each year thanks to typos.

I have no idea if those numbers are accurate but I wouldn’t be surprised.  There’s a whole industry that revolves around typed in domain names.  “Domainers” as they’re sometimes called buy up lots of lots of domains with no intention at all of developing them into a website.  Instead they simply leave them “parked” and when visitors arrive at them all they see are a bunch of ads. 

The whole business model revolves around domains that are either:

1. Typos of well known sites. If you’re trying to visit Copyblogger.combut forget a “g” you’ll be taken to a site that consists solely of ads.  If your site becomes big enough you’ll start to see copycats trying to steal some of your traffic like this too.  

2. Keyword phrases that naturally get lots of searches and potential type in traffic.  For example, let’s say you are going to a show in Manhattan and you want to find a nice place to eat while you’re there.  You might open your browser and type in a phrase like “restaurantsinny.com”.  If you do you’ll be taken to another site with nothing but ads. 

When you click on any of the ads on these sites the owner gets paid.  And if they’re using AdSense ads then Google gets a cut too.

Now, historically Google has always demanded that AdSense publishers deliver unique, quality content.  In fact you could be denied participation in the program if your site isn’t up to snuff.

But with the launch of Google AdSense for Domains the Big G seems to have changed its tune.  There’s no content at all on these parked sites yet they are allowed into the club.  I guess half a billion dollars is too good to pass up…even for Google.