typo domains Archives – We're Fusible

Living Social registers dozens of typo and anti-company domain names like livingsocialblows.com

As reported by a number of news sites and blogs, the daily deals service Living Social has raised $400 million in a new round of funding, raising the company’s value to a staggering $3 billion.

As the company continues to grow, so to does its ever-growing list of domain names, many of which are focused on typos of its livingsocial.com web address, as well anti-company names.

This week, the list of anti-company domain names registered by Living Social in an effort to protect its online reputation include:

http://whois.domaintools.com/fucklivingsocial.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/livingsocialblows.com

While Living Social has been able to get many anti-company domains, one common variation ending with the word “sucks” (livingsocialsucks.com) is owned by CityDeals.com, another group buying site that registered the domain back in September 2010 according to Whois records.

Living Social registers web addresses regularly, not all of which are typos of anti-company domains. Among the list of domain names, include livingsocialflashdeals.com and livingsocialdailycoupons.com.

This week the company targeted more typos.

Created on…………..: 2011-04-04.
Expires on…………..: 2012-04-03.
Record last updated on..: 2011-04-04.

http://whois.domaintools.com/livingsocicl.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/livingsocinal.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/livingsocinl.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/livingsoclal.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/livingsociail.com

Groupon, a major competitor of Living Social, doesn’t appear to have been as lucky with getting anti-company domain names. Names like f***groupon.com, grouponsucks.com, and grouponblows.com appear to have been registered by individuals instead of the company itself.

Twiter.com shows the power of Typos with +132% Yearly Change in Traffic

Are there problems with typo domains? With many, yes, especially if they were registered in bad faith. But “typo” doesn’t always equal bad faith. And Twiter.com is an example of one such domain name.

At least, in its beginnings.

The typo domain which has been written about many times in the past, received over 79,000 unique visitors in February 2010. At times over the past year, Twiter.com hit over 100,000 unique visitors per month according to Compete. And as the massively popular microblogging service Twitter.com has soared in traffic, so too has traffic to Twiter.com. In February 2009, the domain had less than 35,000 unique visitors per month.

Despite the typo-believers who argue every domain name similar to a trademark or service, is registered in bad faith, Twiter.com was registered long before Twitter.com became what it is today.

No one knows with certainty if Twitter.com will ever try going after the current owner of Twiter.com. But unfortunately, the assumption of many people landing on the Twiter.com page resulting from a typo, is that a typo-squatter must be behind the initial registration.

Whatever happens with the domain, you gotta be impressed by the power of typo traffic. Twiter.com has an Alexa Traffic Rank of 27,136, more popular than some of the biggest sites on the net.