Chance is that your Internet Service Provider has implemented a system that will display a search page whenever a url gets mistyped. The technique behind those interceptions is simple. Most Internet users make use of the DNS servers of their Internet Service Providers. These DNS servers turn the names that the users type in into IP addresses. If the name does not exist then the DNS servers cannot perform that lookup usually resulting in a “not found” or “problem loading page” error in the web browser. Some ISPs have decided to route all requests that cannot be looked up to a page of their own which most of the time displays search results for the term along with advertisement.
The reason for doing this is simple: cash. ISPs earn money if you come to those search pages and use them to find what you are looking for. More often than not those search pages are not helpful at all. Here is why. Most of the time users know where they want to go if they mistype a url, say ghackss.net instead of ghacks.net. All that they would need to do to fix the error is by editing the url.
The page that the provider displays on the other hand uses a different url structure leaving the user with the only valid option to enter the url again in the address bar of the web browser. It would be possible to edit the url of the new page as well as it usually contains the entered domain name as a search term somewhere at the end.
Users with Internet Service Providers that redirect DNS errors have a few choices. Some ISPs have a page where the behavior can be changed manually. A second alternative would be to switch DNS servers. Again, some ISPs offer DNS servers that do not take part in those redirects but it is also viable to switch to open DNS server providers that do not redirect DNS errors.
The third option comes in the form of the No Redirect add-on for the Firefox web browser. The add-on is only suited for advanced users as it requires basic knowledge of regular expression to configure new Internet Service Providers. It comes with a few pre-configured including Verizon, Rogers and Earthlink but if the ISP is not among them it would be necessary to add the search page to the list of available ones. This is not as difficulty as it sounds though as it is possible to simply copy and edit the regular expression of the already included service providers and websites.
If the ISP is added properly the default “problem loading page” or “not found” page will be displayed instead of the redirected search page of the ISP. The main benefit of this is that it is now easy to edit the url that has been entered to visit the desired website.
No Redirect not only takes care of Internet Service Provider redirects but also to stop so called smart error pages. Smart error pages are used by some websites instead of the usual 404 error pages when a page cannot be found. You might have seen those at Microsoft.com for example where Microsoft displays all kind of “did you mean” information instead of an error message.
The final option – one which I was not able to get working – is the ability to always preview shortened urls. If anyone gets this working let us know in the comments.
NoRedirect is an interesting add-on for users who are using the Firefox web browser and are experiencing DNS error redirects or smart error pages that they do not want to see.
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I often use OpenDNS to avoid DNS Error. Thank you for this add-on.
Or you can call/write them and ask them to disable it. That’s what I did.
in windows, use hosts file. for canadian rogers subscribers for example, set http://www20.search.rogers.com to redirect to 74.125.45.100 (google.com)
Hijack of DNS errors in order to gain money is a bad behaviour, but what about the in-text hijack for the same reason like the Kontera Advertising in this portal ? What’s the difference ?
You will hijack even this comment if I use words like:
windows
Microsoft
servers
Business is Business
The main difference here is that this is my website and I can do whatever I want with it and you are free to stay away if you do not like it. ISPs on the other hand exploit something that is not theirs.
Agreed. What a website does is its own business. Often when a website does something i dont like, I just add it to my hosts file. You cant escape your ISP so easy.