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Why Does This Mistyped URL Redirect To Mitt Romney’s Campaign Site?

Seriously. I don’t purport to know the reason why a simple URL typo redirects to a page on MittRomney.com, but it definitely does. You can try it for yourselves. Try to visit someecards.co. Ther...
Why Does This Mistyped URL Redirect To Mitt Romney’s Campaign Site?
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Seriously. I don’t purport to know the reason why a simple URL typo redirects to a page on MittRomney.com, but it definitely does. You can try it for yourselves. Try to visit someecards.co. There, you see?

    Of course, someecards.co is just one letter shy of a very popular web address, someecards.com. Someecards has been around for about 5 years, and has provided the web with an abundance of e-card parodies that use dry humor and old-school Hallmark images. The site allows users to create their own someecard using various templates, and then displays the most popular cards on its homepage. If you haven’t seen someecards shared copiously via Facebook or Twitter, you’re simply not spending enough time on the internet.

    And now, forgetting the “m” at the end of the URL means that you’ll land on this, Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney’s “About” page:

    Dafuq?

    Of course, popular sites buy up the mistype domains that closely resemble their real domains all the time. For instance, typing facbook.com redirects to Facebook. Typing twitter.co redirects to twitter.com. But why would it redirect to Mitt Romney’s about page?

    The Daily Dot first spotted the strange redirect, and suggested that the Romney campaign may be snatching up mistype domains to boost traffic to their site in the final march to the election.

    According to Compete, someecards.com grabbed 782,259 unique visitors in July (U.S traffic only). If only a fraction of those visitors mistyped to URL when trying to navigate the the site, well, you do the math.

    This could simply be a prank, as well. There’s no additional proof that I could find that links the Romney campaign to someecards.co. The identity is protected by a GoDaddy affiliate who keeps domain info private, and a quick try of several dozen other mistype domains in the general vicinity of someecards, its sister sites, and other popular humor sites turned up empty – no redirects to the Romney site.

    But that’s a needle in a haystack-type pursuit.

    The “.co” TLD was introduced in 1991, and for years assigned to Colombia. In 2010, the domain was opened up to the rest of the world. Someecards.co is currently available with GoDaddy auctions. Its current price is $280.

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