Google makes $497 million a year on your typos in the search bar

While you may think that typo is just a mistake that makes you erase the entered word in the search engine query bar and lose several seconds, such typos may bring millions of dollars to search engines, Google in particular.

Benjamin Edelman and Tyler Moore have estimated that they make the search giant $497 million per year.

Edelman and Moore have published a conjoint work titled "Measuring Typosquatting Perpetrators and Funders." They note: "According to our analysis, 57% of typo sites include Google pay-per-click ads."

"Combining our observations with financial reports and others' estimates, we conclude that Google's revenue from typosquatting on the top 100,000 sites is $497 million per year."

It should be noted that Edelman is involved in a lawsuit against Google over Google's use of typosquatting domains to display advertising. Thus the statistics may be biased and hyperbolized.