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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

> The general public no longer types domain names.

I partially disagree. My opinion is that the general public has learned to type the first letter/s of a site they've previously visited, into their browser url bar. The median Pinterest user on the Web is not going to Google to get to Pinterest.com, even if a small percentage of users do so. Typing those first letters into the browser has become radically more common for the typical user than using a search engine for sites they visit regularly. The majority of Web users have long since figured out that typing into the browser reveals sites from their history.

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I tend to agree with your view, or am biased because it reflects my pattern. However I would add, browsers (Chrome at least) have a bit of a dark pattern that pushes people towards a search making searches very common although not always needed/intended.

For example, when I type the first 4 letters of my bank's URL, the omnibox has 3 suggestions prior to the direct bank URL even though it's a site I frequently visit and google knows that. They want me to search "BANK NAME" because then I'm more likely to click on the top link which of course is an ad.

>For example, when I type the first 4 letters of my bank's URL, the omnibox has 3 suggestions prior to the direct bank URL even though it's a site I frequently visit and google knows that. They want me to search "BANK NAME" because then I'm more likely to click on the top link which of course is an ad.

This is strange. For nearly every letter on the keyboard, Chrome's first suggestion in the address bar is a site I regularly visit. I.e. for p its paypal.com, for e its ebay.com.

There are almost no cases where the first suggestion isnt a direct URL. I wonder what settings differ between us.

You shouldn't use Chrome

You missed the general point. The discussion is about unknown domains. If I was looking for vacuum reviews, I wouldn't type vacuumreviews.com but rather search for vacuum reviews. If was was looking for football scores, I wouldn't type footballscores.com but rather search for football scores. The former used to be a common way to browse before the advent of search engines.

That's not to say that there is no SEO value for footballscores.com; there is.

So, you say that people are more interested in "web content about Facebook" than "web content about weather", and they aren't typing in "facebook" to get to facebook.com, and going through google (likely unintentionally)?

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=weather,facebook

I actually watched a friend google Facebook and go to the website through the results... It seemed so strange to me. Maybe some people have become trained to do that? I've only seen it once but it stuck with me as odd.

Lucky you. Even informatics students go further:

1. Type google.com into the address bar. They don't know that modern browsers can directly redirect search input to your favorite search engine. 2. Type the domain (including extension) to the google search input. 3. Click on the first link.

I honestly fear the future.

The most horrifying part is that they probably do this every time they want to visit that domain, and don't even know what a bookmark is.

Never mind about writing <html><head></head><body><ul><li><a>link1</a></li><li><a>link2</a></li>...</ul></body></html> and using a simple list of their favorite links as their home page.

My only consolation is that when these people grow up and have some money to spend, the HN crowd will all look like Odin, with all the magic we can work using our mastery of the runes. I bet I sacrificed some of my eyesight by sitting too closely to old, low-res CRT monitors, too.

That's the wrong comparison.

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