alt Hacker NewsAuthor here.
Yes, it will autocomplete the most popular domains first, then known registered domains, and then fall back to appending popular TLDs.
The reason is that it's impossible to enumerate all domains. gTLDs (like .com, .info) mostly publish their zone files, but ccTLDs (like .cn, .de) usually don't.
But maybe you're right. After reading these comments, it's clearly confusing to people.
Replies
andai • today at 12:50 PM
I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind appending the TLDs?
Can't you just append any TLD to anything and get a domain that "might" exist? Or am I missing something?
There are limits to how accurate you can make this. Zones like .xyz renew at 18%, so you'd expect 0.2% of those domains to expire without renewal each day. The tranco list is based on a 30 day look-back and I've seen a small percent of those domains lack name servers, even for the latest list.
Similarly, domains can be registered since the last time you downloaded your lists. So you never have a complete or accurate list.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to suggest names that have recently expired or domains that could have been recently registered. The alternative requires an NS lookup.