Combosquatting

Volume 3, Issue 9 | November 6, 2008

Discussion

The results of this study show that combosquatting not only exists across a wide spectrum of brands, but also demonstrate that this practice is actively causing harm to the brands themselves and to consumers looking for brand products and services. Examining the content on the sites shows that an alarming 50.6 percent of these domain names host PPC sites.

Figure 2, which shows the usage of the sites included in the test, indicates that appropriate company content is surprisingly low at just 22 percent.

Figure 2

Figure 3 compares the Direct Navigation traffic that certain terms garner to the number of search engine queries they receive. Specifically, it examines whether terms and their associated domain names receive more, less or roughly equal amounts of traffic when compared to search engine queries. Twenty-nine percent of the terms received more traffic than searches, 51 percent received less and 20 percent received about equal amounts of traffic and searches. The percentage of terms that received more traffic than searches is a conservative estimate, since the range in ratios used to determine relatively equal traffic was set from 1.00 to 1.99 instead of 0.90 to 1.00 or another similar range. The range used includes results that returned greater traffic rather than results that returned less traffic. Figure 4 provides examples of how the ratios were calculated.

Figure 3

Figure 4: This figure contains examples of brand+keyword domain names that may be combosquatted or are owned by the appropriate company.

Target	Domain Name	Search Term	Monthly Searches	Monthy Visitors	Traffic:Search
American Express	americanexpresscard.com	american express card	2,412	13,667	<1
	americanexpresscards.com	american express cards	708	2,190	<1
	americanexpresscreditcards.com	american express credit cards	672	1,458	<1
	americanexpressonline.com	american express online	336	7,801	<1
	americanexpressrewards.com	american express rewards	5,640	13,314	<1
craigslist	craigslists.com	craigslists	4,608	50,036	<1

With 51 percent of the traffic to search ratios at less than one and 29 percent of ratios greater than one, there appears to be no relationship between search frequency and domain popularity. Therefore, when deciding which domains to register and enforce, one should make an informed decision based on traffic rather than search engine popularity.

The data shows that a large number of people are indeed practicing Evolved Navigation instead of, or in addition to, checking a search engine. Including combinations that have equal traffic and search engine hits, the percentage of users that are using Direct Navigation to search for brand sites is almost equal to those using search engines. Because of this Evolved Navigation trend, combosquatters and companies alike can benefit from registering domain names that are based upon consumers’ online needs, preferences and somewhat predictable behavior.

Figure 5 shows the types of harm being done to brand owners through combosquatting.

Figure 5

Out of the 144 search terms that received more domain name traffic than search queries, 59 percent were owned by someone other than the rightful brand owner. Seventy-five percent of the names that were not owned by the rightful brand currently point to PPC sites, forcing brand owners to spend additional money for visitors to reach their site if they do so by clicking on a paid advertisement.

These results also demonstrate more intangible harms to overall brand image. Customers are being exposed to content that they are not seeking when entering an address into their browser’s address bar. Particularly damaging are the Web sites that point to pornographic content, but even the most innocuous pay-per-click sites are not what consumers were looking for and force them to work harder to find their desired content. Not only do users come away with an extremely negative experience, but they also come away associating the unwanted experience with the brand. This is damaging to the brand, regardless of who actually owns the domain name.

For the purposes of this study, a third-party Web site refers to a site that is not owned by the expected brand owner, but is home to another Web site that is not overly harmful to the brand. A small percentage of sites that we examined indicate that a domain is for sale, demonstrating both the movement towards evolved cybersquatting and the continued use of an outlawed ransom approach to selling domains with the intention of reaping a capital gain (when those domains include extensions covered under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy). Overall, the use of combosquatting demonstrates that cybersquatters are increasingly sophisticated and that a more active approach to defending brands is needed.

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