Google, which runs the largest ad network on the Internet, is making millions of dollars a year by filling otherwise unused Web sites with ads. In many instances, these ad-filled pages appear when users mistype an Internet address, such as “BistBuy.com.”

This new form of advertising is turning into a booming business that some say is cluttering the Internet and could be violating trademark rules. It also triggered a speculative frenzy of investment in domain names, pushing the value of some beyond $1 million.

Google specifically bars Web addresses that infringe on trademarks from using its ad network, but a review of placeholder Web sites that result from misspelled domain names of well-known companies found many of the ads on those pages come directly from Google.

“It seems very hard to reconcile Google’s support of this activity with their ‘Do No Evil’ motto,” said Ben Edelman, a Harvard University researcher who has looked extensively into advertising on unused domains.

Google is defending its business practices, saying it removes participating sites from its ad network if a trademark owner complains those sites are confusingly similar.

“Unless it is confusing to somebody, trademark law doesn’t apply,” said Rose Hagan, Google’s chief trademark lawyer.

The Silicon Valley search giant is the largest but not the only ad network showing ads on placeholder Web pages. Yahoo! and Australian firm Dark Blue Sea run similar services.

This form of online advertising relies on “type-in traffic”: users who type the information they’re looking for into the Web browser’s address bar instead of using a search engine. Industry analysts estimate 15 percent of Web traffic originates this way.

That has created a demand for domain parking, which involves owners of a domain name “parking” that name with a firm that creates placeholder pages and then inviting Google or other Internet ad networks to fill them with ads.

When Web surfers arrive at those sites and click on those ads, Google and Yahoo! get paid by advertisers for that click and share their revenue with the owners of the domain names.       Opinion about these ad pages is divided. Some say they are frustrating junk pages. Others, including those who speculate on potential traffic of a specific domain name, say they help people find information related to what they’re looking for.

“We want those pages to function as alternatives to search engines,” said Matthew Bentley, chief strategy officer for Sedo, a parking service that manages more than 1 million unused addresses placed with the Google ad network.

The parked ad pages are mostly unattractive, but Sedo, Google and Yahoo! said they are working to improve them by adding more information. The parking service usually handles the creation of the ad sites.

“It’s such an easy process,” said Ron Jackson, publisher of DNJournal.com, an online publication that covers the industry. “In two minutes, I can set up a thousand domain names.”

The practice has sparked a speculative scramble to register unused names and test their ad potential. Because purchasers can change their minds within five days and avoid paying the $6 registration fee for the name, many investors enter the names in Google’s ad program for a quick test and quickly drop those that don’t yield enough clicks to cover the domain registration fee.

Of the 30 million dot-com names registered worldwide last month, more than 90 percent were dropped, according to domain name registrar GoDaddy.com. As a whole, the Internet has 54 million active .com and .net addresses, according to VeriSign.

Jackson said he has bought 6,600 domains and uses several ad services to earn revenue on them. “I know quite a few guys making over a million dollars a year from advertising on their domains,” he said. “It’s like a 24-hour money-printing machine.”

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