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Oliver Wendell Holmes Library

URL: Uniform Resource Locator

Looking for a web site of a particular company, group or organization? There are other ways to find out besides using a search engine. A web address is called a URL, which means uniform resource locator. It was agreed in the early formation of the web that all addresses would conform to some standards, just like area codes in telephone numbers. Each part of a URL has a meaning which you can decode by looking at each section between the forward slashes. The first part of an address indicates what protocol to use. The graphical part of the web uses HyperText Transfer Protocol or HTTP. The second part, known as the domain name, contains the address of the site's homepage. This domain name is everything between the http: and up to and including the .com, .edu, .gov, .net or .org. Third and more parts are folder and file names. On the latest version of the Netscape Navigator web browser, the URL location or "go to:" box now links to the search engine Google. Enter a company name, like Johnson and Johnson and Netscape will convert this to a URL, and will proceed to open that page. Beware - this is not 100% accurate, but, for very well known entities, "Ford Motor Company," it works remarkably well because of Google's accuracy. If you enter a phrase, it will default to Google for search results. For more information on URLs and their meaning see Netspaces Guide to URLs. For a dictionary of web terms, see Webopedia. Top...

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