Typoz happen. (See?)
But a typo in a June 1 news release by AdViewGlobal (AVG) directed traffic away from a new website the firm was showcasing and caused it to land on a site registered in Europe.
The domain — adveiwglobal.com, in which the “e” and “i” are transposed — is registered in the Czech Republic. The Czech site, which appears to redirect to Los Angeles, is a search portal with advertisements for making money at home. It was registered in March.
None of the content on the site appears to be related to AVG, which defines itself as a professional advertising and communications firm based in Uruguay.
AVG’s news release was issued through PR Newswire. The correct URL for AVG appears near the top of the release, but the transposed URL appears at the bottom. Some media outlets republished the news release and provided clickable links.
Any person who reads the news release from top to bottom and clicks on the link at the bottom is taken to the Czech site.
Here is an example of a site from which viewers who click on the bottom link are taken to the Czech site.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4PRN/is_2009_June_1/ai_n31912229/
Some sites that republished the AVG news release did not provide clickable links — either in the top position or the bottom. Had visitors copied and pasted the URL near the top of the news release into their browser window, they would have arrived at the site AVG was showcasing. Visitors who copied and pasted the lower URL would have arrived at the Czech site.
It sometimes is a strategy to misspell words in web-based content to gain a search-engine advantage, although deliberately misspelling a URL and directing traffic away from a website launch promotion would not seem prudent. It is unclear if the typo that appeared in the June 1 news release was a deliberate mistake on AVG’s part or just a plain, old-fashioned typo.
It is possible that the Czech site hopes to gain visits from people who misspell the adviewglobal domain name. The practice is controversial — and potentially brings trademark issues into play — because it enables a site that may have no connection to a brand to leach traffic from the brand by registering a domain name that approximates the branded domain.
Whether adviewglobal.com is aware of adveiwglobal.com is unclear.
What is clear is that the Czech site could have benefited from the typo, whether it was deliberate or accidental. Visitors who landed on the page expecting to see a dynamic web portal of the sort AVG described in the news release could have been confused. Such visitors would have to take additional steps — such as returning to the news release and looking for the appropriate link or discovering for themselves that a typo had occurred, and then typing the correct URL into their browser windows — in order to visit the AVG site.