It would be okay if I typed in facebook.com or faecbook.com, sure. But not allowing me to see the index for "facebook" is really not what I expect from a search engine. What if I want to type "facebook" and see general information, or news? I can't as your search redirects me away.

Maybe offer a card: "Do you want to visit Facebook?" would suit the best of both worlds. Or, if you must, a 10-second auto redirect.

Anything but going straight to FB.

from my anecdotal experience: having anything other than a hard redirect entirely misses the point of this feature. A click or waiting 10 seconds pretty much nullifies all the benefit. I think an opt-out is the best way to go. Any technical enough user that is bothered by it should be competent enough to disable it or be aware what happens when they are trying to get general information.

Observing my dad using his iPad, he regularly types sites without the TLD with his only intention being to get over to facebook.com

How often do you search for just "facebook" (or any other site) without any other qualifiers and expect to get information or news? If you search for "facebook" on Google all of the results above the fold just go to facebook.com page anyway. If you want info about the most recent facebook scandal you'll likely get better results from any search engine if you add more search terms e.g. "facebook scandal"

I never search for website I already want to, when I type it, the URL show up and I use it.

It's because of affiliate links as explained above by author

> Surprisingly (to me at least) that is the feature that resonates the most with non-technical users. A lot of people use Google just as a navigational tool to go to a website they know about. This saves them a step for some highly popular websites, but your point is still well taken.

And I think that's the crux of the confusion here. HN users are on the more technical side and it seems you've covered some of the technical search terms well.

I think it would help to pick a target demographic and focus on that. For Google that's non-technical or low-technical users, which leaves many others scratching their heads as more advanced search features start disappearing and junk content ranks higher and higher every year. I don't think it's possible to please all demographics simultaneously.

Mentioned below by another commenter, for what this feature is, it makes sense to keep it opt-out. A technical user can figure out how to change it, while the target audience of it, would not (or not as easily).

Could make a subdirectory, subdomain, or even different domain e.g. runnaroo.tech that allows you to keep the user-friendly defaults on runnaroo.com, and more technical users could go to an alt location with a different set of defaults, and perhaps more features exposed by default.

Similar to having a mobile, lite, or no-js version of a site.