 Here is my host.conf file with notations.
Notice it says that the host.conf and the nsswitch.conf file should be in sync for the resolver order.
# /etc/host.conf - resolver configuration file
#
# Please read the manual page host.conf(5) for more information.
#
#
# The following option is only used by binaries linked against
# libc4 or libc5. This line should be in sync with the "hosts"
# option in /etc/nsswitch.conf.
#
order hosts, bind
#
# The following options are used by the resolver library:
#
multi on |