4 ms·

apex domain is different from www cname

quickthrower2 4y ago
I just don't get how the browser gets a response like this (below), and then figures out what to do next. Sister comment said it might just try the common "www." prefix. $ dig wixsite.com ; <<>> DiG 9.16.1-Ubuntu <<>> wixsite.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 65168 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 65494 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;wixsite.com. IN A ;; Query time: 3 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.53#53(127.0.0.53) ;; WHEN: Sat Jul 16 09:12:42 AEST 2022 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 40 $ nslookup wixsite.com Server: 127.0.0.53 Address: 127.0.0.53#53 Non-authoritative answer: *** Can't find wixsite.com: No answer Does this mean that the WIX SEO team should really resurrect the record and do a 301, otherwise they are wasting their inbound links?
- smugma 4y ago
  As someone hypothesizes above, it’s common for browsers to add www. to domains that don’t resolve.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    I'm not sure if it's because I have my browsers set to generally "do what I say" or because I'm using a filtering proxy, but Firefox doesn't seem to try again if I just put "wixsite.com" in the address bar --- it gets a Host Not Found from the proxy and stops.
    - account42 4y ago
      That is weird - it does the fixup from http://wixsite/ http://wixsite/ to http://www.wixsite.com/ http://www.wixsite.com/ but leaves http://wixsite.com/ http://wixsite.com/ alone.
- remram 4y ago
  I think there isn't an inbound link, the crawler is choosing to hit http://wix.com/ http://wix.com/ if links to wix.com subdomains are common enough. It might be that there are millions of links to www.wix.com and docs.wix.com and user.api.wix.com and not a single (broken) link to wix.com, and they will crawl http://wix.com/ http://wix.com/ anyway and decide that "the site is dead". This is a problem with their methodology.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Yes this goes to “what is a site?” and “who/what is controlling what sub domains”. Especially with things like GitHub.io, and indeed wix. I think ignoring dead apex domains when a subdomain worked would have been a good extra pass for the methodology.
    - account42 4y ago
      Perhaps that is the reason for the apex domain to be dead in the first place - to communicate that the subdomains are the real roots of separate sites. Similarly, TLDs themselves are not supposed to have any A records (although there are some that do).

I just don't get how the browser gets a response like this (below), and then figures out what to do next. Sister comment said it might just try the common "www." prefix. $ dig wixsite.com ; <<>> DiG 9.16.1-Ubuntu <<>> wixsite.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 65168 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 65494 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;wixsite.com. IN A ;; Query time: 3 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.53#53(127.0.0.53) ;; WHEN: Sat Jul 16 09:12:42 AEST 2022 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 40 $ nslookup wixsite.com Server: 127.0.0.53 Address: 127.0.0.53#53 Non-authoritative answer: *** Can't find wixsite.com: No answer Does this mean that the WIX SEO team should really resurrect the record and do a 301, otherwise they are wasting their inbound links?

smugma 4y ago
As someone hypothesizes above, it’s common for browsers to add www. to domains that don’t resolve.
- userbinator 4y ago
  I'm not sure if it's because I have my browsers set to generally "do what I say" or because I'm using a filtering proxy, but Firefox doesn't seem to try again if I just put "wixsite.com" in the address bar --- it gets a Host Not Found from the proxy and stops.
  - account42 4y ago
    That is weird - it does the fixup from http://wixsite/ http://wixsite/ to http://www.wixsite.com/ http://www.wixsite.com/ but leaves http://wixsite.com/ http://wixsite.com/ alone.
remram 4y ago
I think there isn't an inbound link, the crawler is choosing to hit http://wix.com/ http://wix.com/ if links to wix.com subdomains are common enough. It might be that there are millions of links to www.wix.com and docs.wix.com and user.api.wix.com and not a single (broken) link to wix.com, and they will crawl http://wix.com/ http://wix.com/ anyway and decide that "the site is dead". This is a problem with their methodology.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Yes this goes to “what is a site?” and “who/what is controlling what sub domains”. Especially with things like GitHub.io, and indeed wix. I think ignoring dead apex domains when a subdomain worked would have been a good extra pass for the methodology.
  - account42 4y ago
    Perhaps that is the reason for the apex domain to be dead in the first place - to communicate that the subdomains are the real roots of separate sites. Similarly, TLDs themselves are not supposed to have any A records (although there are some that do).