Typosquatting is registering domains that are common misspellings or close variants of a brand's name (a missing letter, a transposed pair, a different TLD, an added word) to capture traffic from users who mistype the operator's address or search loosely for it.
Definition
Typosquatting is registering domains that are common misspellings or close variants of a brand's name (a missing letter, a transposed pair, a different TLD, an added word) to capture traffic from users who mistype the operator's address or search loosely for it. In an affiliate context, a typosquatted domain redirects that traffic through the affiliate's tracking link to the operator, so the affiliate is paid for players who were already trying to reach that operator directly.
It is a form of affiliate fraud and trademark infringement: it intercepts the operator's own brand demand rather than generating new players, it can mislead users, and it usually breaches the operator's programme terms and trademark rights. Operators monitor for it and pursue takedowns and commission clawbacks.
In context
For affiliates, typosquatting is squarely in the prohibited column: registering misspelled brand domains to funnel an operator's own direct-navigation and loose-search traffic through affiliate tracking is trademark infringement and affiliate fraud, it breaches virtually every programme's terms, and it produces commissions that will be clawed back when detected, along with termination and possible legal action. It also adds no value — the players were already heading to that operator.
Content covering affiliate practices should treat typosquatting as an example of what not to do, alongside brand-term bidding without permission and cookie stuffing, all of which intercept existing brand demand rather than generating new customers. For an affiliate protecting its own brand, the flip side applies: monitoring for typosquatted versions of your own domain and pursuing takedowns is part of brand protection.
For affiliate-facing content, the framing is that typosquatting registers misspelled brand domains to intercept an operator's own traffic through affiliate tracking, that it is trademark infringement and affiliate fraud that breaches programme terms, that it generates no genuine value and leads to clawbacks and termination, and that it belongs in the prohibited-practices category with unauthorised brand bidding.
Worked example
An operator's brand-monitoring finds a domain one letter off its name redirecting through an affiliate's tracking link. It documents the trademark infringement, files a takedown, voids all commissions from that affiliate as fraud, and terminates the account.
Its programme terms already explicitly ban typosquatting and unauthorised brand-term use.
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