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Internet security company McAfee published an extensive report on domain typosquatting. The report analyses some example domains from different categories, takes a look at the increase in typosquatting and then proposes methods for combating typosquatting. I’ve said it before: typosquatting is a serious problem that investors of generic domains are facing, because they suffer from the bad public perception caused by cybersquatters. On the other hand, large corporations are monetizing typos and trademark-infringing domains, too. Earlier this month, I posted about Verizon making money from typos, for example.

From McAfee’s website:

Clearly, typo-squatting affects everyone who spends any time or earns their living on the Internet.

The surge in typo-squatting is contributing to whiffs of parasitism associated with the booming business of buying and selling domain real estate.

Some in the industry dispute the negative cast being given to domaining. A senior executive for Sedo, a major parking service, was quoted saying that “We want those pages to function as alternatives to search engines.”

To be clear, though, McAfee does not rate yellow a generic site like cellphone.com or typos of generic keywords like lirics.com. We reserve our yellow rating for typo-squatters of well-known brands, companies and sites.

Ultimately, in our view, typo-squatters fail the added-value test. Parked typo sites filled with pay-per click ads don’t help the consumer find the site he was actually looking for. And they don’t help the company build and brand their product in the way they see fit.

Sahar has done a good job commenting on McAfee’s report already, so I’m not going to write more about this, as I agree with what he’s saying. Click here for Sahar’s blog post on this topic.