[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 271164] New: Address bar treats eTLDs as searches instead of URLs

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271164

            Bug ID: 271164
           Summary: Address bar treats eTLDs as searches instead of URLs
           Product: WebKit
           Version: WebKit Nightly Build
          Hardware: All
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: Normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: New Bugs
          Assignee: webkit-unassigned at lists.webkit.org
          Reporter: richard.towers at digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk

Created attachment 470418

  --> https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=470418&action=review

Screenshot of webkit nightly build showing the address bar defaulting to a search

Hello,

I'm a developer on GOV.UK, which is the UK Government's primary website.

We've been encountering an issue recently where if a user types a URL with the domain "gov.uk" (like "gov.uk/government" or "gov.uk/ucmove") into the address bar, it defaults to a Google search instead of opening the URL.

This does not happen with links to "www.gov.uk", for example "www.gov.uk/ucmove" correctly requests the URL (and receives a redirect to https://ucmove.campaign.gov.uk, which is expected).

This causes a bit of a problem for us, because departments are in the habit of buying physical advertising (think "banner on the side of a bus") which uses gov.uk/whatever as the short link. When users come to type this in WebKit based browsers, they get a page of search results which may not even include the page the department was advertising (particularly if it's new).

One solution would be for us to switchh to advertising www.gov.uk URLs instead, which we will consider. However, being able to use shorter URLs is nice for physical reasons - it leaves more space on the side of the bus for other messaging / images etc.

I suspect that the issue here is that gov.uk is on the public suffix list as an ICANN domain, making it an effective top-level domain. Similar .uk domains which are not on the public suffix list (such as parliament.uk) do not seem to suffer from this issue.

To reproduce:

- Focus the address bar
- Type gov.uk
- Press escape to clear the context menu
- Press enter to submit
- Observe that a google search page loads

Following the same steps with parliament.uk loads the parliament website, as expected.

Would you consider having domains like gov.uk/whatever load URLs directly, instead of being interpretted as searches?

Thanks very much,
Richard Towers

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