Scott Horne, the self-proclaimed Web Professor, has created an interesting online tool that looks for typo domains. In his recent blog post called “Make Money with Typo Squatting”, he explains how someone could buy typo domains and earn money from them. While I’m not advocating purchasing typo domains to make money, this tool can be used to protect your domain name and your company’s brand.

By entering your current domain name (or the domain names you own), the Typo Squatter tool will give you a list of possible domain names. The tool gives you domain names that are double character, wrong key, missed key, and transposed key types of typo domains. There are several different options that you can select when searching using this tool.

The “Show Free Names” option is the default. The search results will give you a list of domain names that are currently not registered (domain names that are free to register). You can use this search to either become a squatter or purchase the domain names that are similar to your own domain name (this would allow you to make sure that the typo squatters cannot register them and take away your potential website visitors or take advantage of your brand by redirecting traffic to their site instead.

The “Show Registered Names” option allows you to see if there are any typo domain squatters out there that have registered domain names that are similar to your domain name or are typos of your domain name. This option will help you find people who are attempting to capitalize on your domain name or your company’s brand. You can take this list and look up the registered owner(s) of those domain names using a whois service. Most registrars have a whois look up service that is free, or you can use something like www.betterwhois.com or www.allwhois.com.

The “Show Registrant” option allows you to see who owns the domain names. It may be a little slow to look up the registered owners, so I personally prefer to get the list of registered domain names and then look them up manually using a whois service.

Using the “Overture Score” option allows you to see if there are people who search for that domain name and gives you an indication of whether or not that domain name has traffic.

As a test, I searched for “searchengineguide.com” and it came up with the following results:
Error Type.. double character
ssearchengineguide.com
Error Type.. wrong key
aearchengineguide.com

Error Type.. missed key
earchengineguide.com

Error Type.. transposed key
esarchengineguide.com

There are actually a lot more results that the tool will give you, but for purposes of this article I am only listing the first one given by the tool. Each of these error types gives different results, and depending on the domain name there you’re given a different number of results.

According to Wikipedia, “Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative address owned by a cybersquatter.” Generally, if you find that someone is typosquatting on your domain name, it’s recommended that you contact an attorney and send out a cease and desist letter to the registered owner of that domain name. You may need to think about potentially purchasing the domain name from the typosquatter, which is ultimately the owner’s ultimate goal. However, by purchasing the domain name before any typosquatters purchase them might be the ultimate defense.