diff --git a/youtube_dl/__init__.py b/youtube_dl/__init__.py
index 6ff0be00f0..a3a8013fb5 100644
--- a/youtube_dl/__init__.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/__init__.py
@@ -258,7 +258,7 @@ def _hide_login_info(opts):
     general.add_option(
         '--default-search',
         dest='default_search', metavar='PREFIX',
-        help='Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos from google videos for  youtube-dl "large apple". Use the value "auto" to let youtube-dl guess. The default value "error" just throws an error.')
+        help='Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos from google videos for  youtube-dl "large apple". Use the value "auto" to let youtube-dl guess ("auto_warning" to emit a warning when guessing). "error" just throws an error. The default value "fixup_error" repairs broken URLs, but emits an error if this is not possible instead of searching.')
     general.add_option(
         '--ignore-config',
         action='store_true',
@@ -709,7 +709,7 @@ def _real_main(argv=None):
         date = DateRange.day(opts.date)
     else:
         date = DateRange(opts.dateafter, opts.datebefore)
-    if opts.default_search not in ('auto', 'auto_warning', None) and ':' not in opts.default_search:
+    if opts.default_search not in ('auto', 'auto_warning', 'error', 'fixup_error', None) and ':' not in opts.default_search:
         parser.error(u'--default-search invalid; did you forget a colon (:) at the end?')
 
     # Do not download videos when there are audio-only formats
diff --git a/youtube_dl/extractor/generic.py b/youtube_dl/extractor/generic.py
index 9db27f9aa3..bcb0765940 100644
--- a/youtube_dl/extractor/generic.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/extractor/generic.py
@@ -383,13 +383,13 @@ def _real_extract(self, url):
         if not parsed_url.scheme:
             default_search = self._downloader.params.get('default_search')
             if default_search is None:
-                default_search = 'error'
+                default_search = 'fixup_error'
 
-            if default_search in ('auto', 'auto_warning'):
+            if default_search in ('auto', 'auto_warning', 'fixup_error'):
                 if '/' in url:
                     self._downloader.report_warning('The url doesn\'t specify the protocol, trying with http')
                     return self.url_result('http://' + url)
-                else:
+                elif default_search != 'fixup_error':
                     if default_search == 'auto_warning':
                         if re.match(r'^(?:url|URL)$', url):
                             raise ExtractorError(
@@ -399,7 +399,8 @@ def _real_extract(self, url):
                             self._downloader.report_warning(
                                 'Falling back to youtube search for  %s . Set --default-search "auto" to suppress this warning.' % url)
                     return self.url_result('ytsearch:' + url)
-            elif default_search == 'error':
+
+            if default_search in ('error', 'fixup_error'):
                 raise ExtractorError(
                     ('%r is not a valid URL. '
                      'Set --default-search "ytsearch" (or run  youtube-dl "ytsearch:%s" ) to search YouTube'