This article was published in partnership with Maldita.es. The story was updated with comments from the Château de Versailles.
Two networks of doppelganger domains are targeting Google searches for fifteen top cultural attractions, including the Alhambra, the Colosseum, and the Louvre. The sites use ads, branding, and domains that suggest they’re an official website for the attraction to sell base tickets with a major markup.
The websites overcharge for tickets, on average, by a factor of 2.5. For example, the official Louvre site charges an adult €22.00 for a ticket; the ticket trap charges €76.00. An Indicator analysis found that the sites may have cost customers as much as €2 million in excess fees.
These ticket traps attracted more than 1 million visits in May by running hundreds of Google Ads that grabbed the top slot for search queries like “Alhambra tickets”, “Colosseum tickets”, “Louvre tickets”, and so on. And they can all be traced back to just two Spanish tour operators, according to reporting by Indicator and Maldita.es, a nonprofit Spanish fact-checking and digital investigative outlet.
Below the paywall: 1,787 words that describe how the ticket traps operate, the full list of search results pages and relevant domains, and our methodology.
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