Typing in "googlecom" in firefox question

[wutsup]

hello wilders,

i just found out something interesting in firefox(not sure about other browsers). I accidentally typed in googlecom instead of google.com in firefox but it still went to google.com. how does this happen even if i forgot the dot in between google and com?

does this happen to you guys as well?

thanks in advance

[Hungry Man]

I suppose firefox checks for invalid urls and then checks for the last three letters and if they're "com" it then checks if the first letters + com is valid. If not it probably does a search for it.

Awesomebox or whatever it's called is pretty cool.

[J_L]

I think its your DNS. My Firefox went to a google search result page of googlecom.

[vasa1]

And I got:
Your request for http://googlecom/ could not be fulfilled, because the domain name googlecom could not be resolved.

[wutsup]

Originally Posted by J_L

I think its your DNS. My Firefox went to a google search result page of googlecom.

are you using the DNS from your ISP? or a third party DNS service?

my ISP is Cox and i have not changed anything related to DNS. so maybe its my ISP's DNS that is automatically correctly googlecom to google.com?

did you type in googlecom in the address bar? or did you go to google.com first and then type in googlecom?

[J_L]

Using ClearCloud. Addressbar of course. I've set keyword.url to the google.ca search.

Interestingly, on my Ubuntu Natty, it went to the CleraCloud search results page. Their DNS and keyword.url are the same.

[wutsup]

Originally Posted by J_L

Using ClearCloud. Addressbar of course. I've set keyword.url to the google.ca search.

Interestingly, on my Ubuntu Natty, it went to the CleraCloud search results page. Their DNS and keyword.url are the same.

oh wow i did not even know about keyword.url and keyword.enabled.

i did some research on it right now and im assuming that making keyword.url blank and disabling keyword.enabled is safe?

and if i do disable keyword.enabled, would i have to type "www" or "http" in front of every website i want to go? Instead of just typing google.com, would i have to now type in http://www.google.com since i set keyword.enabled to FALSE?

[Daveski17]

Well, I typed googlecom into the Firefox runbar & it took me to Google & this thread on Wilders!

(It does the same in Opera, although SeaMonkey keeps taking me to Wikipedia's entry on Google for some strange reason)

[J_L]

Originally Posted by wutsup

and if i do disable keyword.enabled, would i have to type "www" or "http" in front of every website i want to go? Instead of just typing google.com, would i have to now type in http://www.google.com since i set keyword.enabled to FALSE?

No, all it will do is disable addressbar search. The functions you describe are managed by your DNS servers.

[wutsup]

Originally Posted by J_L

No, all it will do is disable addressbar search. The functions you describe are managed by your DNS servers.

ok, but is it safe to disable keyword.enabled and change keyword.url to a blank url?

and i dont think the www and com are managed by dns so now that i disabled keyword.enabled, would i have to type in the full url?

so instead of just typing google.com, would i have to type in http://www.google.com since i disabled keyworld.enabled?

[J_L]

DNS is the reason URLs exist. Without it, we'd still be typing IP Addresses.

As for how safe it is, I think it doesn't affect security.

[wutsup]

Originally Posted by J_L

DNS is the reason URLs exist. Without it, we'd still be typing IP Addresses.

As for how safe it is, I think it doesn't affect security.

ok thanks, but what about my other question?

if you set keyword.enabled to false(disabled), do you have to type in the full URL now?

so instead of typing just google.com, would i have to type in http://www.google.com now because i disabled keyword.enabled?

[J_L]

I just answered that in post #9.

[SweX]

FYI. Typing in "googlecom" in Safari takes me to google.se

Though I tried the same yesterday, but then it resulted in a time out hmm

[littlebits]

How your browser manages url's typed into your address bar depends on two important factors.

1. Default search engine
2. DNS Service

I use Yahoo as my default search engine which tries to automatically correct invalid entries or goes directly to the Yahoo search page if it can't correct the invalid entries.

When I type "googlecom" in Firefox it goes to the Yahoo search page.

Thanks.