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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.

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).

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).