A numeric domain typo generator?

This past week on Jamptap, we have been discussing the fact that ChaCha Search, Inc., has been defensively registering a multitude of typographical mistakes of its numeric domain, 242242.com, to benefit from future type-in mobile traffic. We wondered if there was a way to develop a tool to help with such a task. A numeric domain typo generator hasn't yet been developed but good, ordinary domain typo generators exist on the net and tweaking them for the purposes of discovering numeric domain typo-variants works pretty well.

We used the domain typo generator at DomainTools.com and created this five step process that should take under five minutes to complete:

1. Convert your dotcom wordnumber to the alpha representation of the wordnumber; 242242.com becomes agaaga.com
2. Enter this - 'agaaga.com' - as a search term and unclick only the one box next to 'QWERTY typos' since users will likely be switched to numeric mode on their mobile phone when typing dotcom wordnumbers.
3. Copy the results and paste into a program like Excel where you can carry out a 'replace' function
4. Replace the letters with numbers again
5. Weed out the results that include the original domain, and also its plural - i.e., 242242s.com - and the typos generated for the 'dot' - i.e., wwwl242242.com. There may be other results to weed out including ones with the suffix 'co6' (i.e., NNNNNco6.com).

And there you have it: a list of typo-variants of a dotcom wordnumber for cell phone users who have sticky keys, and problems with letter swapping and letter doubling.

So, how did ChaCha do so far by this method? They currently own 8 out of 21 typos, which is a 38% success rate (provided our typo generator tweak method is a viable one). (We placed a 'Y' next to the domain property currently owned by ChaCha Search, Inc., and omitted the '.com')

24242
42242
22242
24224
24222
242-242
422242 Y
2422242
www242242 Y
ww242242
2242242 Y
242224 Y
2442242
242422 Y
2422442
w242242
2422422 Y
242242com Y
224242 Y
www-242242
www242242com

We must take into consideration, however, that these NNNNN.com's are pretty scarce these days and the current registrants probably won't let them go very easily, especially since a good portion are zip codes and set up as portals for that purpose. Furthermore, buying up typos for usage with the 'www' prefix isn't necessary since cell phone users - most of them - know that 'www' is not required.

Reducing the field according to these restrictions brings the total number of typo-variants to 11 domain names, which are below. ChaCha finally gets a passing grade (at least in our book), with a 'D' at 63%.

242-242
422242 Y
2422242
2242242 Y
242224 Y
2442242
242422 Y
2422442
2422422 Y
242242com Y
224242 Y

Certainly the prized typo-variant of 242242.com is the five-digit domain 24242.com, and what a happy person that Dutch domainer will be in the future...

Obviously, enhancements need to be made for designing a better numeric domain typo generator, especially to address keypad slips unique to a numeric keypad; a finger (a thumb, for instance) can easily slide up or down while moving right or left, and vice versa and miss certain keys or add other numbers. Also, the 'sticky keys' issue is different on a numeric keypad than a QWERTY one, so when the key '2' sticks, for instance, then the 'c' and the 'a' both stick and, likewise, you get double the trouble. A reliable numeric domain typo generator is a long way off, and good old fashioned manual tweaking and experimentation may do the trick in the meanwhile.