Safari cannot open the page because the server cannot be found

For YEARS now, I've gotten the "Safari cannot open the page because the server cannot be found" error on my phone and Mac when I click on a “sponsored” ad in Google search results.

I turned off ad blockers, pop-up blockers, anything I could think of. Read a dozen threads here where other people had the same problem but no solution could be found.

Finally, I saw this answer someone posted somewhere and it actually worked, so I wanted to share it again for anyone else who comes looking for something to try:

I went to Safari Preferences>General> and noticed that "new windows open with:" was filled in as START PAGE.

I changed that to HOMEPAGE and set HOMEPAGE in the next blank to https://www.google.com/

Works like a charm now.