That is the multicast dns rfc, and says .local is used for zeroconf and not manual site-local configuration: Any DNS query for a name ending with ".local."

That is the multicast dns rfc, and says .local is used for zeroconf and not manual site-local configuration: Any DNS query for a name ending with ".local." MUST be sent to the mDNS IPv4 link-local multicast address 224.0.0.251 (or its IPv6 equivalent FF02::FB)