Resolved! via Reese in the Comments…
I think you have engaged in a classic example of overthink. URLs are resolved right -to-left. In other words, xyz.com.com is requesting the subdomain xyz of “com” of the .com TLD. If you pop com.com into WHOIS you will likely discover it too is owned by cNet.
I hadn’t even thought about that. Many thanks to Reese for the solution!
The Original Post
I have spent the last few hours troubleshooting a really odd problem. To kind of get my thoughts in order on what I have done and could do, I thought I would spell everything out here. The problem is that whenever I enter any domain name and put the extension twice (like mitchkeeler.com.com) it redirects me to a search.com search page for it instead of giving me the normal error message.
To give you a little more information ahead of time, my DSL provider is AT&T (or Yahoo! AT&T to be more specific).
Here is where I would be redirected for that:
http://domainhelp.search.com/search?q=mitchkeeler&d=mitchkeeler.com.com
I always use Firefox, so first thing I checked was the other browsers I have installed right now. Both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 7 gave me the same results.
So then I thought, well maybe I have some sort of odd malware or virus on my PC. So I tested another PC, running Windows XP and it gave the same problem. So I thought, maybe it could be a Windows problem or it had spread to that machine? So I turned on my laptop – which is running Kubuntu – and it gave me the same result.
Going out on a limb, I wanted to try something different – so I fired up my PlayStation Portable and tried to recreate the problem it it’s browser. It sent me to the same result.
So now, you would think – well, there is a problem with the router or the connection from AT&T, right? So I unplugged my PC from the router, hooked the DSL line up directly to my PC (taking the router out of the mix) and I still was given then stupid domainhelp.search.com page.
Now I decided to do a traceroute to the badly typed domain to see how it was redirecting. That traced back to cNet, which owns the search.com domain name.
That is where I am at now, and I am kinda out of options on where to look next. If you have any ideas, let me know! Would love to hear ‘em.
Update: Also posted about the problem here on broadbandreports.com!
Bonus! Bad Live Chat Support from Yahoo! AT&T DSL!
As a bonus – for those of you still checking in on this issue, here is my chat transcript with a Yahoo! AT&T DSL support member:
Mickey: How can I help you?
Mitch: Hello, I noticed that when I mistype a domain name such as adding an extra .com at the end, I am now being redirect to domainhelp.search.com
Mitch: Instead of getting and error page
Mickey: That is normal.
Mitch: When did this redirection start?
Mickey: Well, when did you try to put an extra domain?
Mitch: Well, just noticed it today, for example if I type in google.com.com by mistake I am taken here: http://domainhelp.search.com/search?q=google&d=google.com.com
Mickey: Just do not put any weird domain if you do not want to be directed.
Mitch: But, just to confirm – this is a “service” provided by AT&T, correct?
Mickey: All ISP do that.
Mitch: Alright, thanks you for your time.
