Two local Scout groups weren't prepared for the lesson they got in the facts of online life. Both lost their Web sites -- one to an Internet advertiser and another to a company promoting pornography.

The Web sites of Cub Scout Pack 216 and Boy Scout Troop 216, both in Catawba, are no longer their own, since they failed to renew the registration of their domain names.

Domain names such as roanoke.com or pack216.org serve as an address of sorts on the Internet, directing traffic to Web sites (e.g., www.pack216.org or e-mail addresses (e.g., andrew.kantor@roanoke.com).

For the Boy Scouts, losing troop216.org isn't so bad.

The Web site now sports a list of ads put there by a company that grabs domain names by the bucketful.

But the Cub Scouts in Pack 216 didn't fare so well. Its domain was taken over by a company called Inseosite, which has renamed the Web site "Gute seiten aus dem erotik Internet" -- German for "Good sites for Internet porn." It now contains two dozen links with names such as "porno download" and "erotischer index."

Not quite what you'd expect from a Cub Scout site.

In fact, the Scouts didn't know about it until one leader entered "Catawba district Cub Scouts" in the Ask.com search engine and found the list of "gute seiten." Then the words spread quickly, and they weren't happy words.

"We've been violated here," said Dan Johnson, Scout executive for the Blue Ridge Mountains Council, which includes Scout groups from 21 counties in Southwest and south central Virginia. "We're outraged."

Johnson said the Scouts have requested that Ask.com update its search index so people are no longer directed to the site if they search for Pack 216.

David Stultz, Cubmaster of the pack since September, said he was surprised, but not just because of the "erotik Internet" links.

"I wasn't even aware we had a Web site," he said.

They don't anymore. Both Pack and Troop 216's sites were created by a former Cubmaster three or four years ago, according to Chuck Mason, assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 216. And "until last night, we had forgotten these things even existed," he said Wednesday.

The registration for pack216.org expired in March, when it was acquired by Inseosite. Troop 216's registration expired Sunday.

Both groups are victims of software that scours the Web, looking for expired domain names. If an organization doesn't pay its annual registration fee, anyone can legally grab it.

Mason, who's also a Roanoke County Police lieutenant, said, "As far as I know it's like abandoned property." A new owner can register that domain for as little as five or six dollars per year and renew it indefinitely.

Troop 216's was taken over by a company called Domibot that "registers expiring and previously registered domains using an automated process," according to its Web site. Domibot makes money by selling ads on those sites.

And it's a big business. Search companies such as Google will provide Web site owners with ads designed to reflect their sites' content. A site about dogs would get ads for dog food, for example. Visitors clicking them generate money that's split between Google and the site owner.

Businesses such as Domibot own thousands of Web sites, each full of ads related to the domain name. For example, troop216.org now has links to a Scout fundraising site and one to a "support our troops" site -- both keying off the word "troop" and hoping to appeal to someone who stumbles across it.

That happens a lot, according to Google spokesman Barry Schnitt, because many people don't use search engines -- they simply guess. "I want cheap airline tickets," he said, "so maybe I key in cheapairlinetickets.com."

Key in "troop216.org" and you don't get the troop's site, but at least you get something useful, Schnitt said. And the site owner gets paid if you click one of the links.

Cub Scout Pack 216's site was scooped up in a similar process, but by a company with a different revenue model.

That company, Inseosite, makes money several ways. One method is to create what are known "link farms" -- collections of hundreds or even thousands of Web pages.

Many search engines rank Web sites based on how many other sites refer to them. They can be fooled, however, by link farms, which (for a fee) can provide a site owner with thousands of inbound links in an instant, making that site look more popular than it actually is.

Unfortunately for Pack 216, porn sites are the ones that often pay for link-farm services, which is how the Scouts' former site is apparently being used.

Besides selling links, Inseosite makes money from porn sites by bringing them visitors, even if it has to trick them into going there.

"It's a numbers game. The more domains they have, the more chance some of them are earners," said Ann Elisabeth Nordbo, a Norwegian spam hunter who's quite familiar with Inseosite. "And yes, getting people to porn sites who'd never otherwise even think about it is a goal," she said. "Porn sites pay quite a lot for new sign-ups."

But the economics lesson doesn't impress the Scouts. "Our concern, of course," said Diana Howell, Cubmaster for Pack 2, "is boys accidentally finding that and clicking on that stuff."