By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer

VeriSign Inc. today used its power as the operator of the "dot-com" and "dot-net" Internet domains to redirect a torrent of valuable "junk" Internet traffic away from Microsoft and America Online into its own proprietary search page.

Once VeriSign finishes installing the system virtually any Internet surfer in the world who enters an incorrect Internet address ending in .com or .net into their browser will be funneled into the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant's newly christened "Site Finder" service. VeriSign expects to complete the installation before midnight Monday.

VeriSign confirmed last week it was testing the system, rankling officials at Microsoft and America Online, both of which lose a source of traffic -- and revenue -- to their own in-house redirection pages.

At stake is control of a large amount of valuable Internet traffic. Every second, somewhere in the world, someone types an incorrect address into their Internet browser and gets bounced to a Web page he or she didn't want. VeriSign says it handles more than 20 million incorrect queries every day.

Users often get the Internet's version of a wrong number, ending up at a site with an address very similar to the one they were trying to reach. More often, the result is the online equivalent of the "fast busy" signal -- a page informing users that the site they requested can't be found. Users who rely on Microsoft's Internet Explore were typically referred to a page that offered the MSN Service's search engine as a tool for finding the correct Internet address.

With Site Finder in place, Internet users who type incorrect addresses ending in .com or .net will now be jumped to a VeriSign-controlled page. The page will offer a search service, and VeriSign will generate a small amount of revenue every time a user clicks on one of the "sponsored" links returned by the search engine, VeriSign Vice President of Naming Services Ben Turner said.

Two companies with ties to Yahoo Inc. are providing the technology and advertising know-how to drive the new VeriSign service. Inktomi Corp., a search technology company acquired by Yahoo in March, is one partner, while Pasadena, Calif.-based Overture Services Inc., a major provider of paid placement services, is the other. Yahoo announced its intent to acquire Overture in July.

Many Internet users may not notice much of a change, since the most widely used Web browser (Microsoft's Internet Explorer) and biggest Internet service provider (America Online) already redirect so-called "junk" traffic to their own in house search pages. To the uninitiated, the VeriSign page looks very much like Microsoft's redirection page, which also informs users that the requested site can't be found, prompting them to use an MSN search box.

VeriSign's service will trump both AOL's and Microsoft's because Site Finder operates the master registry of names ending in .com and .net and, as such, is the ultimate arbiter of what Internet users see when they type an address ending in one of those extensions.

The result could be a significant boon for VeriSign and a measurable hit for the companies that stand to lose the typo traffic.

VeriSign's Site Finder could easily generate more than $100 million a year in profits for the VeriSign, according to Mark Lewyn, the chairman of Reston, Va.-based Paxfire Inc. Formed in 2003, Paxfire designs systems to redirect misspelled Internet queries.

America Online spokesman Andrew Weinstein said today that the company is strongly opposed to the VeriSign move, which it fears will undercut its ability to provide its customers with what it considers the ideal search experience. A Microsoft spokeswoman said last week that the company was monitoring VeriSign's plans and was weighing its options. Both companies said that traffic from incorrectly typed Internet queries was not a major source of revenues.

Matt Rosoff, an independent analyst with Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft, said the amount of traffic MSN search gets from redirections is probably considerably greater than Microsoft cares to admit, but he said the threat posed by the VeriSign program to Microsoft's bottom line is minimal.

Microsoft is certainly monetizing the traffic that MSN search gets from users who incorrectly type Web addresses -- earning a potential $100 million annually, but Rosoff said that amount is a drop in the bucket for Microsoft, which is expected to generate more than $30 billion in revenue this year.

Lewyn said that VeriSign could make even more money from the junk traffic if it put advertising directly on the redirection page, but VeriSign's Turner said the company opted for a simple add-free interface based on feedback from focus groups.

"This simple design is what people found the most useful and the least intrusive," he said.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages the Internet's addressing system and oversees addressing companies like VeriSign, had no comment on the VeriSign plan.