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Safari no longer automatically finds or guesses web addresses...

JesterJJZ

JesterJJZ

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jul 21, 2004
2,506
898
So I have an interesting problem...er inconvenience.

I used to be able to just type in a site without the .com extension and Safari would automatically guess where I wanted to go. If I just typed "apple" it would go to "apple.com" if I typed "google" or "youtube" it would still find where I wanted to go. Now this isn't auto complete or anything, I know the difference. It wouldn't add the .com and highlight it before hitting enter. Sites that I've never gone to before would also be found. by just typing a name without a dot extension.

A couple weeks ago it stopped doing this. If I just typed a word it would take me to an Optimum Online search engine results list. Anyone know how to change this back or what happened?

Interestingly enough, this happened roughly the same time my router began to crap out. I kept getting IP conflicts on all my computers and eventually the router stopped working all together. The site guessing in Safari also no longer works on my PC.

Any insight on this would be great, thanks!
 
Sounds like it could be a DNS server issue. Did you change the DNS server settings in your router or in the Network Preferences in OS X. Also you might try to reset Safari and see if that helps. Does the problem occur in all browsers you try, or just in Safari?
 
MacManiac76 said:
Sounds like it could be a DNS server issue. Did you change the DNS server settings in your router or in the Network Preferences in OS X. Also you might try to reset Safari and see if that helps. Does the problem occur in all browsers you try, or just in Safari?
Click to expand...

Also happens on my PC using both Safari and Firefox...
 
JesterJJZ said:
Also happens on my PC using both Safari and Firefox...
Click to expand...

Well it's obviously something with your router then. Try connecting to the internet without the use of the router, if possible, and see if the problem persists. You could also try resetting the router to factory defaults and setting it up from scratch to see if maybe a setting just got messed up along the way.
 
MacManiac76 said:
Well it's obviously something with your router then. Try connecting to the internet without the use of the router, if possible, and see if the problem persists. You could also try resetting the router to factory defaults and setting it up from scratch to see if maybe a setting just got messed up along the way.
Click to expand...

I had to buy a new router, but its still doing the same thing...
 
Ok, interestingly enough, I changed the DNS setting on my router using the browser utility and now it all works, but only on my PC running XP. Still the same on my Mac.

Thanks by the way with all this.
 
MacManiac76 said:
Ok then trying changing your DNS server settings in the router to use Open DNS servers (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) and see if the problem remains.
Click to expand...

Unless you register and opt-out OpenDNS hijacks the DNS in a similar manner.

I recommend using the Google public DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) which do DNS properly.
 
JesterJJZ said:
Ok, interestingly enough, I changed the DNS setting on my router using the browser utility and now it all works, but only on my PC running XP. Still the same on my Mac.

Thanks by the way with all this.
Click to expand...

Check the "Search Domains" field in your System Preferences/Network/YOURCONNECTION.

If there's something in this field then your Mac will be searching under there. For example if you had "uk.lan.example.org" in the Search Domains field and you just typed "google" into your browser the following DNS searches would be carried out:

google.uk.lan.example.org
google.lan.example.org
google.example.org
google.org
google

They would be carried out in that order and the first request to receive a valid response would be taken as the one you want, and since many ISPs (and OpenDNS) now respond with a valid DNS record for EVERY SINGLE REQUEST (for hosts that don't actually exist they supply the IP of an ad or search page) it can really mess with things.

As for how your Search Domains field got populated; many routers supply a default when you connect to them and request an IP. You may be able to change it, but better to simply use a DNS provider that respects how DNS is supposed to work.
 
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