I remember once seeing a list of top X popular searches which included the term 'www.hotmail.com'. While I've no doubt it'd work, the level of understanding necessary to even attempt it is somewhat scary.
Um, I consider myself a native of computer-land and do this all the time. People accidentally type stuff in the wrong place. That doesn't mean they're cretins.
My father's computer uses msn.com as the homepage, which automatically grabs the focus and puts in in the search field of MSN. I'd guess that 90% of his queries on MSN are w.example.com, where the first "W"s are in the address bar where he placed his cursor, and then the actual input is queried to Bing.
OK, perhaps I misworded it, but... it wasn't that it was happening but that it was happening regularly enough to get into the top 10 queries - that strongly implies that it's deliberate.