I’ve had a Blogger account since September 2002, which means over this period I must have typed in the domain http://*.blogspot.com hundreds, if not thousands of times. But this past week appears to have been the first time I’d ever mistyped the URL as blogpsot.com instead — althouse.blogpsot.com, it happened to be. Try it yourself.
When you land, you’ll find yourself at “AmazingBibleStudies,” a Netscape 4-optimized CSS job which feebly boasts of being a “Mega site of Bible studies and information”:
Though the claim of mega status probably cannot be substantiated, it most certainly is a Van Impe dispensationalist collection of Bible passages and vacation photos of Israel.
And it turns out that no matter what subdomain you use — atrios.blogpsot.com, iraqthemodel.blogpsot.com, americablog.blogpsot.com — the administrator has them all set to display the “AmazingBibleStudies” page.
It’s a common technique to buy domains based on probable typos for popular domains, with the expectation that they’ll be useful for spamming and scamming and squatting — so this could be the spam version of Crosswalk.com, or just an amateur evangelical Bible scholar with a mischievous self-promotional side.
The domain registration does not list it as an E-commerce site, though there is that rotating banner ad at top. If it was really a money-making enterprise (or even an attempted one) it would presumably be plastered with Google AdSense. WHOIS does reveal the owner of the domain to be one Doug Powell of St. Petersburg, FL. It may very well be this Doug Powell. And for what it’s worth, the contact page indicates that he would like you to call him “Master P.”
I figure Powell is not a professional cybersquatter because he doesn’t hide his name. Compare to Blgspot.com, a true squatter site, owned by Caribbean Online International Ltd., “your reliable provider for hosting websites in the caribbean.” Now that’s a legitimately illegitimate site.
That said, the Blogpsot.com registration details are nevertheless intriguing:
Let’s repeat part of that again for the Google bots: “666, angels, antichrist, armageddon, audio bible, audio sermons, baptist, bible helps, bible prophecy, bible statistics, bible study, bible tracts, bible, catholic, christian, churches, cults, devil, free sermons, gospel music, gospel, heaven, hell, israe.”
Yes, Israe. And 666 comes before angels? And the devil gets a nod, but no mention of Christ? Yikes — maybe it’s less Van Impe and more LaVey.
Update: Credit where it’s due — Respectful Insolence took a somewhat more in-depth look at this site in a December post titled “Cypersquatting for Jesus?”
I’ve had the same problem; my friends kept telling me they ghad been directed to this bible site I had no idea how it could have happened. Now I understand. Thanks very much for explaining! Certainly there are people who would do anything for a getting a few more readers, but buying a bad spelt domain!!!
Joy of Joys. that true professional “Caribbean Online International Ltd.” strikes again. I was halfway through registration of a domain name (registrar crazydomains.com.au, domain av-firvulag.com) when I was interrupted. When I went back a few hours later to complete the process, Caribbean Online International Ltd. had already bought it and loaded it with popup adverts…
You should look them up on http://www.domain-disputes.com/recent-decisions.htm
I have also experienced the same when mis-typing my long domain.
Hello
Even i faced the same problem, all thanks to my typing skills. Is there any way out because unfortunately one of my blogs contains my full name in it. I am more worried because i am not a christian and ppl around won’t appreciate the ghost blog if they were to comit the same typo error.
Please help
This is a very common thing that people do, and probably no way to avoid these sites (except learn how to type better). Great post though, and great find.