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Typosquatting Could Be Damaging Your Business’ Reputation

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Published on January 17, 2025

There’s a lot to consider when you’re running an online business, from creating a user-friendly experience to keeping your ecommerce store secure. Fortunately, most website builders come with the basics to help you with this – like an SSL certificate and payment data encryption – but it’s important to be aware of threats by scammers that could impact both your business and your customers.

Have you ever made a typo when searching a URL and been surprised with the result? This could have been an instance of typosquatting – a common cybercrime that takes advantage of domain typos. In this article, I’ll explain exactly what it is, how it can impact your business, and the best ways to avoid your site being targeted.

What Is Typosquatting?

Typosquatting is a technique that cybercriminals use to attract users to an unsafe website, potentially installing virus software or stealing personal information from the unsuspecting visitor.

A third party registers a domain name with a similar, yet intentionally misspelled URL to that of a trusted site, in the hope that searchers will be redirected to them. The targets are usually trusted, popular sites with commonly misspelled domains.

For example, research by Wix shows that over one in five searches for the design tool Canva are misspelled, with domains such as “camva” and “canvas” receiving this traffic.

Typosquatting example — The easy mistake of searching for “Camva” instead of “Canva” led me to an entirely different site – exactly the type of situation that cybercriminals could use for typosquatting. Source: Website Builder Expert

Sometimes, this is no more than a prank or coincidence, but there are two more harmful motivations behind typosquatting that could seriously harm your business:

Cybercrime: Scammers have been known to create a similar page to a trusted site in the hope that unsuspecting visitors either install malware or steal their personal information.
Diverting traffic: Unethically, typosquatting is sometimes used by threatened competitors as a tactic to drive traffic towards their own site.

Besides potentially reducing your site’s traffic, typosquatting can negatively impact your business’ trust and credibility.

How Does Typosquatting Work?

I’ve covered one in my previous example, but there are many kinds of typosquatting to be aware of, including:

Typos: Adding, leaving out, or swapping letters, such as an “m” in place of an “n”
Misspelling: Common with fabricated or unnaturally spelt brand names, such as Flickr.com which is commonly spelt Flicker.com
Added hyphens: When the domain is two words, a hyphen is often added, such as changing Capitalone.com into Capital-one.com
Wrong domain extensions: The correct domain with an incorrect extension, such as using .org instead of .com
Www.: adding “www’ to the start of the domain. For example wwwtarget.com

Top Tip: The sooner you know if your site is experiencing typosquatting, the sooner you can take action. A good way to do this is by searching your URL with these common mistakes and seeing if scam sites appear.

How Can I Prevent Typosquatting?

Annoyingly, there isn’t a way to fully remove the risk of your domain falling victim to typosquatting, but there are some things you can do to prevent the chances when registering your domain:

Keep your domain short and simple
Make it easy to spell
Keep it memorable and unique
Register variations of your domain with common typos

If you’ve spotted any sites that ring alarm bells, gather evidence and report the site to Google and the domain registrar as phish or malicious. Also, it’s a good idea to warn your customers and site visitors of the unsafe website across email, social media, and any other platforms you use. This will help to keep your customers safe and minimize harm to your credibility while you wait for the site to be taken down.

Written by:

Annie Angus Writer

Annie Angus is a Writer for Website Builder Expert with a passion for shaping jargon-heavy research into digestible content. She has previously researched and written about industries ranging from tech to fashion, and now, after testing our top website builders such as Wix and Squarespace, she is enthusiastic to share her findings with our readers. With first-hand experience in utilizing social media and online marketplaces to grow a small handmade clothing business, Annie understands the priorities and concerns held by SME owners, and knows precisely what they look for in a website builder. She combines this unique perspective with her knowledge of website builders to produce engaging content spanning all areas of the small business journey, from creating a strong website to growing and maintaining an audience.