Google Scam?

[smidsy]

I type bigw.com.au directly in to the Mozilla address bar and it comes up page not found, but if I do a google search it gives the exact same URL and will let me connect via google.
Any way around it, I object to this crap on principle.

[FenceFurniture]

I type bigw.com.au directly in to the Mozilla address bar and it comes up page not found

I got the same, but when I put www. it went straight to it.

[smidsy]

Maybe that website is just a pedantic POS because its the only site that needs the www these days.
Cheers

[Master Splinter]

Adding the www makes all the difference. Tell Big W to improve their computer people.

[Cliff Rogers]

... Tell Big W to improve their computer people.

'Computer people' is a very loose term.
Geeks aren't what they used to be.

[Fuzzie]

Something else has changed. Firefox and most other browsers automagically try to fix common badly formatted search addresses by adding the www. prefix and the .com suffix to fix addresses. Some users need to disable this feature. Technically speaking address should also end with a trailing /.

Prepending www. is currently enabled in my version of Firefox but I am seeing the same behaviour. A name server somewhere has changed?

[snowyskiesau]

bigw.com.au does return a name server 'hit' but as it's not an IP address (A record), can't be connected to.

I think that the Firefox option (browser.fixup.alternate.enabled = true) only kicks in if there is no response from a name server for the entered address so isn't activated in this case.

www .bigw.com.au is a CNAME (alias) that actually points at the Akamai cloud service.