similarly named web page

[queshaw]

I accidentally left off the final 'e' in japanese when typing the URL for this web page and got one of those pages where every link returns search results from sponsored sites.

Does that mean this web page gets so much traffic that it's worth someone's while to make a similarly named web page to catch people who mistype the URL?

[Chris Hart]

Possibly, or someone may have just decided it would be a good site for advertising. I'm not aware of any publicly available stats for websites, although google, and other search engines are a good way of determining what sites are likely to have a lot of traffic.

[keatonatron]

People buy domain names in bulk and put ads on all of them to test out which ones are the most lucrative. Recently, it has gotten so cheap to sit on domain names that some people will even just hold them until someone who really wants the name offers to buy it from them for a considerable profit. The process is often automated by software designed to find available names that are similar to existing sites, regardless of that site's traffic.

It can be really frustrating when you're trying to buy a domain name for a legitimate website. When I was shopping for my domain name, I looked up about 15 names that I thought would be great for my site; 10 of them were those STUPID "directory" sites that just link to Google ads, and the other 5 were personal sites that said nothing more than something along the lines of:

"UNDER CONSTRUCTION! Come back soon!

Last Update: September 7th, 1998"

:@