Right now I get this page:

http://wwwwz.websearch.verizon.net/search?qo=wwwhrsk.com&rn=10ogGMosjdeczX7

Anyway to get Google to come up on a bad search?

Sorry, kevs, but what, precisely, is your question?

thanks ARtie!
Ok, when I type in a bad url, Verizon takes me to their mediocre search field. I'm thinking, why now allow me to go to Google then?

RoadRunner does the same to me. Why not type the URL (or better yet, the name of the site) in the Google search box? When I do that, Google usually comes up with the correct URL via a link.

thanks J,
starting to get in that habit a bit more often. But any hope for this redirect just going to Google?

My guess is that Verizon would have to redirect you to Google. I don't think that there's any way for you to do it.

I use Verizon DSL with Safari, and I'm always taken to Open DNS when I mistype.

Now, this is interesting... Open DNS resolved "finetubedmac" and inserted "Fine Tuned Mac" (where it appears in the screenshot), yet here it didn't resolve "fivetunedmac." (I'm not about to research permutations and combinations to find out why.)

Edit: I just took another look, and Verizon's "mediocre search field" is a Yahoo search field...not Google, but is it truly mediocre?

And, by the way, this is what Open DNS returned when I clicked on "Search" (for Fine Tuned Mac). (That looks pretty Googley to me.)

You're taken to OpenDNS because you're using OpenDNS domain name servers, so kevs would have to switch from Verizon's (presumably default) DNS servers to OpenDNS in order to get the "Googley" search experience you describe.

Thanks, but would you please clarify?

I don't follow "you're using OpenDNS domain name servers."

Edit: Sorry... I just realized you probably mean my settings in SysPrefs > Network > Advanced > DNS:

DNS Servers:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
8.8.8.8.
8.8.4.4

So kevs coud change to those and get to where I get?

When you type a bad URL, you are supposed to get a "domain not found" error. Some ISPs have started trying to make money by instead taking you to a search page; the ISP gets a small amount of money each time someone does a search.

You have no control over this; there's no way you can control what your ISP does when you type a bad domain. The only thing you can do is set your computer to use a different ISP's domain name servers, and you'll get whatever those domain name servers when you type a bad URL.

If you have set the OpenDNS name servers in your network settings, you'll get the OpenDNS search page if you type a bad URL.

Google also has domain name servers of their own, but as of right now if you use their domain name servers and type a bad URL you just get an error message.

Have you any feelings about why an Open DNS search results page looks so much like a Google page?

Actually, the OpenDNS results much more closely resemble the Yahoo! Search Results for the same query than they do the Google Search results.

Which isn't surprising; if you hover over any of the links above the search box (Images, Video, Audio, News), you'll see that they're links to Yahoo search strings. OpenDNS is simply piping Yahoo's Web search results into its own results page. (I don't have sufficient curiosity to pore over the page source to figure out where that happens.)

Edit: As for the stylistic resemblance to a Google results page, which is perhaps what you're really asking about, I can only surmise that Google has so defined Search on the web that anyone creating search-related stylesheets imitates Google simply to suggest legitimacy.

> Edit: As for the stylistic resemblance to a Google results page, which is perhaps what you're really asking about, I can only surmise that Google has so defined Search on the web that anyone creating search-related stylesheets imitates Google simply to suggest legitimacy.

That's what I meant.

Interesting observation... Who'd'a thunk that Yahoo might need to emulate (plagiarize?) Google to gain legitimacy?

thanks Tacit, others for the definitive death knell on that.
I don't like Yahoo results.

I would just like to go back to my Google homepage with the message it was bad url. oh well.

While I was playing around with my DNS Server codes I somehow managed to get to a Safari "No such server" (or some-such, but not "Server not responding") page (only once, though) that included a Google search box.

Does anybody know how to replicate that?

Does anybody know how to replicate that?

I always thought safari would display that if there was a dns problem. (no dns servers or can't ping them?)

Got me beat.

Maybe I just hit a momentary glitch somewhere?

Edit: When I delete my my DNS servers from SysPrefs > Network > Advanced > DNS a bad URL takes me too kev's Verizon/Yahoo page (if that's what you meant by "no dns servers").