Trailing dot is complete record, don't add any search domains onto it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_domain)

Trailing dot is complete record, don't add any search domains onto it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_domain) It's why NS records should have trailing dot in return to prevent unexpected lookup behavior. Technically you can put just hostname for CNAME record. Obviously, any clients that don't have that domain as search domain will fail but for internal domain, you could do it.