How many endings does the checker try?

About 180, chosen for registration volume, out of more than 1,200 generic endings and the country codes. The keyword-and-ending family combines those endings with impersonation words.

Is example.net a typosquat of example.com?

Not by itself. An exact name under another ending is often a legitimate unrelated registrant or your own defensive one. The registration record decides.

Which endings should I register defensively?

The country ending where you trade and the one or two generic endings people assume, if available. Watching covers the rest at lower cost.

Why does the report show a Possibly yours tag?

Because the name shares your registrar and nameservers, which is the pattern of a defensive registration. It is a tag, not a verdict, and you can correct it.

PATTERNS

TLD Squatting: Your Name Under a Different Ending

Your name is only yours under the endings you own. Illustrative lookalikes in this guide use the reserved .test ending, so that no real registration is named.

by Typosquatting.ai Research23 September 20264 min read

TLD squatting registers the registrable label of a real domain, unchanged, under a different top-level domain, so that example.net or example.app stands in for example.com.

This guide covers how many endings a name can be registered under, which of them a generator tries, why an exact-name match under another ending is usually a legitimate business, how the checker separates that from impersonation, and when to register endings yourself.

Family in a report: Different domain ending
Sample: example.net
Candidates for a six-letter domain: 196 of 3,001, plus 663 with a keyword

What a different-ending name is

The label stays the same and only the ending changes. Since ICANN's new gTLD programme, which received about 1,930 applications on its reveal day in June 2012, the number of generic endings has exceeded 1,200, before counting the country-code endings. The generator tries about 180 of them, the ones with meaningful registration volume, which yields 196 different-ending candidates for a single name, plus the keyword-and-ending family, 663 candidates, where a keyword and a new ending combine.

Family	Example	Candidates for a six-letter label
Different domain ending	example.net	196
Keyword and different ending	example-login.app	663

Why the exact name under another ending is different

Unlike a typo, an exact-name registration under another ending is often entirely legitimate: a different business with the same word, a defensive registration by the brand, or a registry-reserved name. The Public Suffix List defines which endings the public can register under, and the checker uses it to know where a name is registrable at all. This is the family where similarity is least proof of intent, and the report's Possibly yours tag, which matches registrar and nameservers with your own, does most of its work here.

Where the risk actually sits

Impersonation under another ending usually pairs the ending with something else: a keyword, a recent registration, mail routing, a certificate issued in the last few days. The endings themselves carry some signal. A handful of new endings are cheap enough that they attract disposable registrations, and a name under one of those with a fresh certificate and a mail record is the profile to read first. The examples guide lists documented cases.

How the checker finds and ranks it

A finding's review priority is a published rule, not a score. A name with an address or a mail record is active; active names registered under 90 days ago are Elevated, and so are active names under a year old that carry an impersonation keyword. Anything else that is active or has a registry record is Review, a name with no registry record and no DNS answer is Low signal, and a lookup the registry refused stays Unknown rather than being counted as a negative.

A different ending is a large distance in characters but no distance to the eye, so the report shows the ending change plainly rather than relying on the distance band.

What to do with one

Register the endings you would be embarrassed to lose, usually the country ending where you trade and one or two generic ones, and watch the rest. The defensive registration guide works through the trade-off. For an active, recent name under another ending with mail routing, keep the report and file with the registrar; for an unrelated business with the same word, do nothing, and tag the row Ignored so the next report does not raise it again.

Common questions

How many endings does the checker try?: About 180, chosen for registration volume, out of more than 1,200 generic endings and the country codes. The keyword-and-ending family combines those endings with impersonation words.
Is example.net a typosquat of example.com?: Not by itself. An exact name under another ending is often a legitimate unrelated registrant or your own defensive one. The registration record decides.
Which endings should I register defensively?: The country ending where you trade and the one or two generic endings people assume, if available. Watching covers the rest at lower cost.
Why does the report show a Possibly yours tag?: Because the name shares your registrar and nameservers, which is the pattern of a defensive registration. It is a tag, not a verdict, and you can correct it.