As a developer I'm annoyed every time I enter "defined.in.hosts.file" in the address bar and Chrome does not believe this is a url but performs a search instead. Yes, I can define anything as a valid domain in hosts and yes that website exists on my computer.
It does a DNS lookup and if it's a valid domain shows you this. If you see it for complete nonsense, then it's possible your ISP is doing DNS Hijacking like mine!
Eg. if I type "cheese", it shows "Did you mean to go to http://cheese/"? If I click that link I get TalkTalk's "Error Replacement Service" full of ads (or at least I did, till I switched to Google DNS because TalkTalk's "opt-out" system has been conveniently broken for years)!
Ah, that explains that. I always found that feature annoying, I didn't know it was because my ISP misbehaving. I always get a century link search page when I typo urls.
The new Google "did you mean to go to ?" nonsense is something else to add to that link!
My ISP (TalkTalk) claims to have an opt-out page but the forums suggest it's been broken for years, and today it is a 404. I have an open issue with the CEOs office to opt me out manually but they've been pretty useless so far.
If you add a slash to the end, it'll always treat it as a domain. eg. "cheese/".
I did see someone from Google ask if it'd be useful if after the first time, when Google knows it's a valid domain, it should just go there directly (even without the slash). Everyone said yes, but it doesn't seem like it was ever implemented!
