This is part of DNS. Having a period after the domain tells DNS not to search any search domains setup on the system. If your system was setup with the search

This is part of DNS. Having a period after the domain tells DNS not to search any search domains setup on the system. If your system was setup with the search domain example.com, www.independent.co.uk could also be evaluated as www.independent.co.uk.example.com (if it had a DNS entry) by your system whereas www.independent.co.uk. can't.