I was wondering what your thoughts are for adding a feature for not forwarding queries for local domains, I know there is an option when you use pi-hole as a DHCP server however not from standalone (unless i am mistaken, which is highly likely)
I added the below line to /etc/dnsmasq.conf
local=/contoso.com/
And it seems to have worked, queries for said domain are "OK (cached)" and are not "OK (forwarded)"
I have tried above and more as described in a post under "Exclude “local” from being placed in logs/top domains? ", however no luck with this.
Are you using Pi-hole's DHCP server?
No, I'm not using the DHCP option of DNSMasq/PiHole.
Okay, still if you define
local=/lan/
than queries to laptop.lan or something.lan should never get forwarded, even if they cannot be answered from cache (which will hold only the /etc/hosts entries for you as you don't use the DHCP functionality).
Have you tried exactly this already?