North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Sitefinder II, the sequel...

  • From: ennova2005-nanog
  • Date: Thu Jul 13 14:39:43 2006
  • Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Reply-To:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=HRjx4EgB3sorO6SVPKJnWh2ynRsI6WMej9yqKdfxiQ3m6MDMF6aoc7NnF5a3j0An/266pgDBbB+uJXNlFko8uaneLxpUdVOU/s5gBDQfknDRea0Yy2tUG2sQ82mXikusQI4vvPJuP0K4NHnV2FxuEwJh+WEPj/atoiYmUklxu4Q= ;

Divining user intent is better handled in the user application where such intent was stated rather than in the infrastructure (DNS)

If the service wants  to help (human) users find their way to the web sites they "intended" to get to .. isn't a better solution the one already offered by many search engines- which is to prompt the user with a question

Did you mean ... ( offers corrected spelling) ?
Perhaps you meant to go to (list of sites follows) ?

This alerts the user that they made a mistake, and lets them pick another action from the application they used in the first place (application local behaviour)

If so, the solution belongs in the browser and not in DNS where it may have unintended consequences.

Some browsers will let you specify the action that should follow if the URL in question could not be found, and if not this functionality could be rolled into a useful plugin or extension.

(Yes, this approach is not without its detractors - http://news.com.com/Microsoft+gives+error+pages+new+direction/2100-1023_3-272578.html  )

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