URL

Often just called the web address, the URL is both the official name and address of a webpage. A URL can also point to a file on an FTP server or an email address. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and it is used to bring up a web page. Every web page on the World Wide Web has a distinct URL, which you can type in to navigate directly to a web page.

The very first part of a URL tells a Web browser what protocol to use when requesting a file that will be used to display a web page on your computer. The first part of the URL might be http (which means it is HTTP protocol), or FTP, etc.

URLs are much easier to remember than Internet Protocol address, which were the original website addresses back in the really early days of the Internet. Scientists at NASA had to type in long binary numbers to get to a particular location on the Internet. Internet Protocol addresses are long strings of decimal numbers or binary numbers. Internet Protocol numbers look like this: 11001010.00010011.10111101.10101001 or like this: 326.17.62.147. URL addresses are usually easier to remember, so they have become standard on the World Wide Web.

The URL sometimes looks like a long string of characters that become progressively less meaningful to human eyes the closer you get to the end of the URL, particularly in large websites as you get away from major pages. The beginning of the URL includes the main website address, but other web pages on a website often have more confusing, less hack-able URLs.

The URL is different from the title of a web page (the HTTP title tag), which is a phrase that describes the content of a web page to human visitors, usually including the company name, if applicable.