Olympics a boom for paint company's website

Every key stroke counts when you type in an Internet address, as a United States paint seller can attest this week after its website was suddenly inundated with unexpected hits from all round the world.

The company, Olympic Paints, whose internet address is www.olympic.com, has been copping a deluge of surprised visitors, including a large number of Australians.

The latest Nielsen//NetRatings global Web Olympics Index shows fully five percent of all that country's web surfers arriving at the official Olympics website had been redirected after first finding themselves reading about American paint products.

The paint supplier's site differs only from the official Olympics site www.olympics.com by a single "s" in its address.

And it hasn't just been the Aussies who have been arriving at the official site the long way round, said Brian Milnes, managing director, ACNielsen eRatings.com, Pacific.

"Our international data also shows 40,000 Americans wanting to find out about the games first went to the paint site.

"I think this shows how important a single letter can be in searching for an Internet address," he said.

"There is food for thought here for all businesses using the Web to look at the ways in which people can be easily misdirected if you don't get the correct name clearly established in their minds."

Proving Mr Milne's assertion true, New Zealand surfers wanting sports information who typed in www.olympic.co.nz this week would have instead
found themselves on a software sales site.

- AC Nielsen

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