Combosquatting

Conclusion

It is clear that combosquatting is a real and quantifiable problem within the field of online brand protection and its impact on frequently targeted brands should be carefully examined. The effects of combosquatting are similar to that of any type of cybersquatting—increased cost of directing customers to the intended brand Web site, decreased revenue, diminished opinion of the affected brands, deflated brand loyalty, and an overall reduction in the quality of customer experiences. Quantitatively, the e-commerce revenue and value of reputation losses caused by combosquatting are alarming. This study uses the following formulas to calculate the monetary value of Web impressions:

Primarily Experience-based Web sites (MySpace, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc.)
Value = Traffic x Impression Value

Primarily E-Commerce Web sites (JCPenney, Nordstrom, Blockbuster, etc.)
Value = Traffic x Conversion Rate x Average Ticket

As mentioned in the second paper—Typosquatting—in this series, based on Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) furnished statistics, FairWinds Partners has estimated an Internet impression to be worth between 15 and 25 cents for experience-based Web sites.

The site craigslists.com, which is frequently visited by people looking for craigslist, Inc. at craigslist.org, receives about 50,000 monthly visitors. In monetary terms, this translates to between $7,500 and $12,500 per month in advertising losses, or $90,000 to $150,000 per year. Beyond looking at these monetary figures, this example demonstrates key insights about combosquatting. Certain Internet users may distrust search engine results or find it takes too long to review them. As a result, some consumers are going to their browsers to try their luck at directly navigating to a domain name before looking for the Web site on a search engine, or they may simply be confused about the official Web site address. Had any of these 50,000 users entered “craig’s lists” into Google, they would have found craigslist.org as the first search result, and been quickly directed to craigslist despite having entered a term that does not match the actual domain name of the Web site.

The content of craigslists.com—a PPC Web site—shows that cybersquatters have recognized this trend in Direct Navigation and have begun to capitalize on it. Quantifying the monetary losses caused to the brand owner shows the extent of the harm and provides an excellent reason to take action against combosquatters.

Much as in the case of typosquatting, brand owners who choose to act against combosquatters must create a targeted strategy that reduces harm considerably while simultaneously remaining manageable and economically viable. It is both unfeasible and unnecessary to register the domain name associated with all search terms for a brand, but targeting those that receive the most Direct Navigation traffic and those that receive more traffic than search hits is beneficial. Employing this strategy helps direct the largest amount of users to relevant and expected content, effectively reducing much of the harm associated with combosquatting. Leveraging the most potent set of qualified domains–each with a positive return on investment–will undoubtedly provide users with a more rewarding online experience.

The data set used in this paper may be made available upon request.

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