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Comment by impendia | Hacker News Reader

> I searched "sketch" the other day and it took me to "sketchers.com"

I got curious and tried the same, with the same results. And I have never before bought shoes online, ever.

But it's even worse than you said: the website is actually "skechers.com", with no t. So, when you type "sketch", Safari is guessing that you're misspelling the name of a shoe retailer.

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One thing that doesn't seem to be discussed a lot in this thread is that the keystrokes alone don't tell you what Safari will do. The second and third cases of the original video show Safari adding extra characters (the second and third phone added "m" as in "realty.com[m]", and in my testing, "sketch" added "rs" as in "sketch[rs]". When I tried (iPad Safari) "realty.com", the "Top Hit" was "realty.com" and it did not autofill anything, and I got to realty.com (no problem there). However, The first phone in the video did not show any extra characters. Is Safari considering it a "search autocompletion" but not showing any extra characters, perhaps because they are suppressed? Also, many commentors here report this not happening for them, but they do not specify the state of Search Engine Suggestions and Safari Suggestions options on their devices. My testing was done with all the default options (which is both Search Engine and Safari Suggestions are turned on)

EDIT: Could it be that the Suggestions system is taking the autocomplete candidate ("sketchrs" and "realty.comm") as its input (instead of what the user actually typed)? That would explain what I've read here except for the very first iPhone in the video...

I'm a bit confused... I just typed "sketch" in Safari on my phone.

The first suggested result was indeed skechers.com.

But then I hit enter (so the total keystrokes were "s k e t c h return") and it did a search in my default search engine for "sketch". Which is what I expected.

so what am I doing that you're not?

I can confirm the "s k e t c h return" -> skechers behavior.

"s k e t c h SPACE return" got me the google search results.

Folks who can reproduce the "sketch" --> "sketchers.com" behavior or the "realty.com" --> "realtor.com" behavior, would any of you be willing to file the issue via Feedback Assistant (only needs a free developer.apple.com account) with a sysdiagnose and a screen recording? Then give me the FB number.

I can get the Safari team to look at this, but I can't reproduce either behavior myself. Any other examples of bogus/unexpected autocomplete also welcome.

I only use Safari and I’ve actually been on realtor.com a ton the past few days. I just punched in realty.com and it directed me to realtor.com. If I do http://realty.com it takes me to the correct site.

Interesting! Maybe it takes a lot of visits to realtor.com to get in this state.

Done: FB7793463. It sounds like you work at Apple? The screen recording is attached to the report.

Thank you! I do work at Apple, on WebKit mostly but I'm in touch with a lot of Safari folks too.

I can't tell if it's my company's censorware or Safari but lately it really likes redirecting 127.0.0.1 to http://www.127.0.0.1.com if a server isn't listening on the port I requested. Localhost does the same thing

I don’t have a developer’s account, but I’m new to iPhone in the last 4 months and my phone also goes from realty.com to realtor.com.

Not sure if a lack of history is for some reason causing it, or the presence of history is preventing it

It's free to sign up on developer.apple.com! Bug reports filed via Feedback Assistant are a lot more actionable, so worth it if you are considering reporting issues.

Happy to as well. Able to reproduce on my iPhone 8. Type in “sketch” to safari. Hit enter. End up at sketchers.com

When I search in iPhone Safari for “sketch” I get a dictionary definition for the word as the top suggested result. Pressing “go” does a Google search for “sketch”.

I get https://sketchfab.com

What do you get if you switch your search engine to DDG?

I use DDG and I see the same behavior:

sketch<enter> --> skechers.com

sketch <enter> --> search for sketch on DDG

So this is presumably not DDG specific behavior. Safari on latest Catalina macOS.

DDG and I get the second response for both cases.

doesn’t do it for me. one difference is my default search engine is duck duck go.

Aha! Same here, it looks like maybe DDG vs Google is the real difference here?

iPhone X here, running iOS 13.5.1. I have Google set as my search engine in Safari.

When I type sketch and press return I am taken to the Google Search results.

Notably, however, I have “Search Engine Suggestions” turned off in my Safari settings, and I also have “Safari Suggestions” turned off in my Safari settings. I’ve turned them off a while back because they were more of a nuisance than a help.

Maybe you and others turned those things off at some point too?

I have "Search Engine Suggestions" and "Safari Suggestions" both enabled, Google as "Search Engine" and I see the same behaviour as you (typing "sketch" RETURN in safari address bar takes me to the Google search results).

I have a completely stock iOS setup (Google search) and have had this happen occasionally. I thought I was going crazy. Glad to see this isn’t just me.

So the hypotheses is, it’s doing a web search and google is doing an auto “I’m feeling lucky” redirect.

I use ddg and I can confirm the sketch<enter> -> Skechers.com

I use DuckDuckGo ;)

I can reproduce on an ipad, with ddg as the search engine. Neat.

iPhone 11 Pro here, everything up to date, and I get the same as you. Type in "sketch" and press GO and I get the DDG results for the term "sketch".

I also tried the example in the OP link and typed "realty.com" and it went to realty.com as expected.

Funnily enough though, as proof that Safari suggestions are still broken despite the above examples working for me... if I now type in "sketch" again, it suggests "realty.com" as the top result. Wtf.

Are you using private browsing? Safari also did a search in my default search engine for me (but sketch.com was the top result on DDG). But when I turn off private browsing and type sketch it immediately sends me to skechers.com despite the fact that I wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of their shoes and my purchase/browsing history reflects that.

Odd that private browsing would impact the autocomplete behavior in that way...

On iPhone 11 Pro and updated Safari typing “sketch” and pressing “go” leads to sketchers website. Have to click on “google searches” to get other results.

Interesting! I have a very new iPhone 11 and it takes me straight to the google results. I wonder if the behaviour depends on your locale?

iPhone X here, running iOS 13.5.1. I have Google set as my search engine in Safari.

When I type sketch and press return I am taken to the Google Search results. Notably, however, I have “Search Engine Suggestions” turned off in my Safari settings, and I also have “Safari Suggestions” turned off in my Safari settings. I’ve turned them off a while back because they were more of a nuisance than a help.

Maybe you and others turned those things off at some point too?

I have both turned on, but cannot reproduce on ios 13. Must be 14 new shiny thing, glad I skipped the update. The amount of things that Apple improved over last 7 years is incredible, I think it’s time for them to move on.

iPhone 8 it leads me to DDG search results.

iPhone 10 on 13.5.1...

I opened a new tab, typed in “sketch” saw Skechers.com below it, but just hit enter on the keyboard... went to Skechers.com.

I’ve never purchased shoes from Skechers.com and have only bought shoes online once before. (A pair of Tevas from amazon in 2019).

I tried the behavior on both my work and personal macbook pros with safari. Work laptop does not suggest anything and searches sketch but my personal one suggests sketchtoy.com for sketch and sketch.com as a second result. Its clearly Siri hijacking the ENTER button.

Edit: Just to mention, I use Firefox as my daily browser in both, so my safari does not have any history on both computers.

When I keyed "sketch" into Brave on a mac, the first entry was momentarily "Sketch — The digital design toolkit". Then that was preceded by "SKECHERS® Official Site - Shoes, Boots & Clothing".

And here's a video: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0xTe8fTeUgpQX6ymGcR8zputg

Note this is on the iOS 14 beta

I wonder if this is somehow region specific. In the UK, this goes to Sketch London (a place for food)

s k e t c h takes me to a DuckDuckGo search.

I’ve always been frustrated with Chrome where it always tries to force the longest URL in my history that matches the current entry.

Ha, I didn't even notice that! Yeah, it's gotten really aggressive about thinking it knows better than you…

Maybe this is the final push to eliminate brands that are misspelled normal words?

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