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Comment by codezero | Hacker News Reader

There’s a pretty simple explanation, and I think the behavior is almost certainly a bug or a UX edge case they overlooked.

The entry in safari is acting only as a search box it seems, and Go takes you to the first result that is finds - which is the first result on Google, likely a paid ad, or just coincidentally a higher ranking.

If you visit the realty.com site directly (Not suggesting this is a workaround, see thread), then type it in, Safari remembers it and gives it higher priority. This seems to be a quirk of a “first visit” UX - it still is meaningful to anyone who has competitors with similar names, and I’d call it a bug to not check the domain first, though assuming good intent, maybe it does, but something about that domain is not right for some heuristic (HSTS, something else?)

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>If you visit the realty.com site directly

How? He literally types "realty.com" (ie: the full domain) in the bar and it goes to "realtor.com."

That’s what I thought I explained.

If you look at the list of items that appear below his typing, the “Top Hit” is “realtor.com” - I am saying that this is reading the typing as a search, and not as a domain. It’s a bug imo that the domain isn’t considered first.

I think it came across as if I’m saying this is correct behavior, I’m not, I’m saying it’s following the UX available, it’s not a nefarious trick to redirect to a competitor. It’s still damaging and needs to be fixed.

I don't think people are misreading your post as approving of the bug. What people are responding to is your suggestion of a workaround: "If you visit the realty.com site directly..."

And the question is: How do you visit the site directly if typing the domain name into the url field doesn't take you there. Your workaround either doesn't work or needs more explanation.

Whoa, thanks for that perspective.

That was NOT meant to be a recommended workaround, that is absurd, so thanks for the downvotes folks!

I was pointing out that after doing that, the default UX behavior leading to the “bad” website no longer happens, indicating it is all about UX and not a DNS thing, or other weird Safari bug.

Feel like this may be the case. It was redirecting me on every attempt initially.

The second suggestion when typing `realty.com` was `Google search: realty.com`. Clicking on that took me directly to `realty.com`, which is also misleading because I was expecting to be taken to a list of Google results where I’d attempt to click on a link to `realty.com`.

Typing in `realty.com` works every time as expected after that.

How do you 'visit the realty.com' site directly if it won't let you type the exact url and go to it?

That’s the bug. I’m not saying it’s not broken, it totally is. I’m explaining why it’s doing what it does from the UX available, in an attempt to differentiate between bad UX/design and some malicious thing done by Apple to a specific website.

I think somehow Apple is getting monetized by Safari suggestions and is stealing this traffic from sites like Realty.com and getting paid by Fortune 500 companies like Realtor.com

I doubt it. I’m sure they are monetizing things associated with it and they should, but Apple would get dragged if they were doing something shady, or maybe not, Google does this and only HN is annoyed (paid results, AMP, licensing google to FF etc. )

How many other businesses are getting screwed by this? Are you saying it’s okay because “oh other companies kinda do the same thing”... come on... direct domain search goes to another domain.... that’s bad, super bad. Are they censoring other searches by deciding what you should and shouldn’t see? I don’t want to be all “conspiracy theory” here but come on... this is a problem, just admit it.

To answer your actual question: put in the https URI scheme first. It won’t assume it’s a search.

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