Mistyping URL takes you to competitor's site? (1 Viewer)

[Kevin P]

This afternoon I wanted to show my wife today's Dilbert strip, so I went into my browser and typed http://www.dilbert.com (or so I thought). I wasn't really paying attention to the screen at the time, but after I hit enter I noticed I was in a site called clickrat (http://www.clickrat.com), which is another "office related" comic strip.
At first I didn't know how I got there; I certainly didn't type clickrat.com. When I tried dilbert.com again I got into dilbert.com. Then I clicked my address bar and discovered what happened - I accidentally typed http://www.dilbet.com (missing an R), and somehow ended up on Clickrat.com. Apparently they bought "dilbet.com" in order to send people who accidentally mistype "dilbert" to their site.
Has anyone else seen anything like this?

 

[Greg_Y]

www.yahooo.com (extra 'o') must have been recently bought by Yahoo! ... they treat it as their own. They haven't bought yaho.com ... I was always hoping Ike Turner would have his homepage there.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

happens all the time. I don't mind so much if its a similar site etc but I've been burned a few times for missing a letter and being taken to a porn site!

 

[Andy_S]

Standard practice for large companies is to buy domains like "sucks.com" so it won't be bought by someone who hates them.

 

[Jay H]

Yeah, happens a lot to me too. Especially with companies with two names like Hewlett Packard. Sometimes you don't know if it's
hewlettpackard or hewlett-packard.
Of course, it's simpy hp.com but sometimes a lesser known company, you have no idea. the 's' at the end of some domain names are also a target.
Jay
P.S. Apparently, nobody has Link Removed yet