And corporations such as Qantas, Westpac and Woolworths have registered the incorrectly spelt internet names because some people are terrible typists or cannot spell.

Consumers can type in quantas.com.au and still get to the airline's website. And if they leave the ''s'' off the end of Woolworths, they will reach the giant retailer online.

Australia Post, for example, has registered austaliapost.com.au and australipost.com.au to make sure clumsy typists can still get through. Another company, weather.com.au, has also registered whether.com.au and wether.com.au.

Internet authorities are also cracking down on so-called ''typosquatters'', who register misspelt domain names.

The ''domainers'' run advertisements for various businesses on the misspelt websites - when people click on the advertisements, the domainers are paid up to $20 a click by the advertisers.

Internet domain-name regulator the Australian Domain Name Administrator has a list of more than 1900 domain names on its List of Prohibited Misspellings, including bigpong.com.au, fightcentre.com .au, kommbank.com.au and wirlpoo.com.au.

Chris Disspain, the regulator's chief executive, said some organisations with savvy IT managers registered the misspelling themselves and then directed customers to their websites.

''Some people can't spell 'weather' and most of us aren't particularly good typists,'' he said.

''From a marketing point of view, if you are Myer, for example, you may decide there are several ways customers might spell that name, but you want them to end up on your website anyway.

''You might register 'myers' or 'mier'. You would be amazed at the number of people who appear to have nothing else to do than sit around and try to come up with misspellings.''

Bruce Tonkin, chief strategy officer at Melbourne IT, a leading official domain name registrar, said big companies secure domain names with similar spellings to stop ''traffic leakage''.

''If you look at Qantas, a lot of people follow the 'q' with a 'u' when typing the name into search engine.

''If somebody is frequently typing the misspelling and ends up on a site where they get distracted, then potentially the corporate could lose that customer.

''They may go to a misspelt page for Qantas and see ads for other airlines, for example.''