Just as these web sites claim typos can potentially be used for bargain hunting. I am not sure how practical this is but the number of web sites offering the service looks very convincing. I have found that misspellsearch.com offers the best customization options for eBay while misspellr.com has covered the most popular US auction web sites. All of these web sites are fairly simple and it should take you just a few minutes to get an idea how they work.
| Auctions | Customization | |
|---|---|---|
| misspellr.com | eBay, CraigsList, eBid, Yahoo! | some |
| misspellsearch.com AKA bestwebauctions.net |
eBay, uBid, BidMonkey | advanced for eBay |
| typohound.com | eBay | none |
| fatfingers.com | eBay, uBid (UK Only), QXL (UK) | none |
| typotool.net | eBay | none |
| auctionbloopers.com |
eBay |
none |
Eager to build this functionality into your web site? Here is a free script you can use. Want it on your desktop? Here is a tool bar.
Usual disclaimer. Unless mentioned otherwise I am not affiliated with the websites I review.
There’s also Missing-Auctions.com (http://www.missing-auctions.com). It offers the same sort of functions as the rest of the sites on your list but there are also a couple of extra ones.
Most notable is the ability to turn a search into an RSS feed. This means that you can set up a search which will automatically notify you whenever a matching misspelled item appears in eBay.
Another useful feature is the ability to see searches that other users are doing either in realtime or as a tag cloud. Useful if you’re looking at buying items cheap to sell on again.