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Typos save you money on auction Web sites

12:05 PM PDT on Wednesday, August 20, 2008

By LORI MATSUKAWA / KING 5 News

SEATTLE - Whether it's electronics or clothes, it can be tough to find a good deal on the internet.

Some of the best deals on Web sites like eBay are hard to find. That's because the listings are misspelled and don't pop up during searches.

"Leave out the "y" in Playstation, it won't basically come up as a search result," said Jeff Bakalar, CNET editor.

Bakalar says misspelled items are common. But there are now services that search for typos to help you uncover hidden treasures.

"They will take your search term and run it through their sort of software algorithm that will generate literally hundreds of different misspellings for the search term you inserted," he said.

Most of the services - which are free - scour eBay. But some also find bargains on Craigslist and provide links.

Some of these Web sites include:

auctionbloopers.com

fatfingers.com

auctionspeller.com

typobuddy.com

missingauctions.com