MDN Web Docs
developer.mozilla.org › en-US › docs › Learn_web_development › Howto › Web_mechanics › What_is_a_URL
What is a URL? - Learn web development | MDN
January 8, 2026 - It is one of the key mechanisms used by browsers to retrieve published resources, such as HTML pages, CSS documents, images, and so on. In theory, each valid URL points to a unique resource. In practice, there are some exceptions, the most common being a URL pointing to a resource that no longer exists or that has moved.
Lenovo
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What Is a URL? A Simple Guide to Web Addresses
... Some items in your cart are no longer available. Please visit cart for more details. ... Please review your cart as items have changed. ... A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a web address that provides a unique, specific location for a particular resource on the internet.
ELI5: What is a URL and how does it work?
A URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is generally just a fancy way of saying a web address. The various parts of the URL are used by all of the systems between you and what you're trying to access to figure out how to get you what you need. It gives you a protocol (how to access it) and the domain (where it is on the Internet) as well as the server address (where it is once you get to the right computer). More on reddit.com
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February 12, 2016ELI5: What do all the characters in a URL mean?
It would have been a lot better if you just copy pasted a real YouTube URL, because that’s not what it looks like. The first part of the URL, before the ://, is the protocol, which determines how you are communicating with the server and what the data being sent means. For websites, it’s http (hypertext transfer protocol) or, for most modern sites, the encrypted https. But other protocols exist, like ftp (file transfer protocol), and other types of programs like databases use urls that start with, for example, mysql://. The next parts of the url are subdomain.domain.tld where tld stands for top level domain. You kind of read this part backwards, actually, since the tld is the biggest category and the subdomain is the most specific category. This basically says which server you’re communicating with. After the domain is whatever is after the slash / which is the path. It’s essentially the server’s responsibility to decide what to do with the path, but this often specifies the specific page on the server that you want to see. This is optional, and if you omit it, the server will just serve you the “root” page. Then another optional part comes after a question mark ?. This is the query, which is a standard way of giving the site specific extra parameters. The parameters are written as name=value and separated by ampersands &. This is extra information that is processed by the server. Some pages have required query parameters, and will give you an error if any are missing, but that’s all up to the server software. For YouTube, the most common query parameter is v which stands for the video ID. So you might see a query like ?v=3MKpDA56-LivQKhH which means “show the video with the ID “3MKpDA56-LivQKhH”. The video ID is basically just a random sequence of characters chosen by YouTube to uniquely identify the video (if they just used the title of the video, it could be too long, many videos could have the same title, the title could contain bad words or characters that some users’ computers don’t support etc., so it’s best for the server to choose its own random, unique identifier). Other parts of the query could tell the server how you got to the site. A link posted to social media might have referrer=twitter.com for example, so that when a user clicks that link, the server knows you came there from Twitter. And yes, it’s called Twitter. And that’s basically it. There’s also the # but that’s less commonly used these days. More on reddit.com
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May 26, 2024Recovering deleted videos WITH a URL link (is it possible) : youtubedl
Just to clarify, I tried to recover the deleted yt videos by going to Wayback Machine. Didn't work. I was searching for answers on reddit. It was... More on old.reddit.com
QUESTION: Is there a URL or IP address that will autoplay Rick Astleys "never gonna give you up" out there?
http://bringvictory.com/ More on reddit.com
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October 16, 2015What is a full URL?
A full URL is a complete web address used to locate a specific site or page on the Internet. For instance, a complete URL might look like https://www.example.com/.
lenovo.com
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What Is a URL? A Simple Guide to Web Addresses
What is an example of a URL address?
For example, if you want to visit Facebook's website, your browser would use the following URL to get there: https://www.facebook.com/. A URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, is essentially the web address you type into your browser's address bar to visit a website. It is a specific example of how you can reach a particular online destination. The https part of the URL tells your browser which protocol to use when accessing this website; then it looks up www.facebook.com, the hostname or domain name of Facebook's website; and finally, it requests the page at '/' path on their server—in this case,
lenovo.com
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What Is a URL? A Simple Guide to Web Addresses
What are URL parameters?
URL parameters are pieces of information that are added to the end of the URL and can be used to provide additional information or to control how the page is displayed. For example, a website may use a parameter to track which pages users visit on their site, or to control how many results appear per page on search engine results pages. The parameters themselves consist of two parts: the name and value. For example, page=2 in a URL tells the server that you want to view the second page of results.
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What Is a URL? A Simple Guide to Web Addresses
Videos
01:00
What is a URL? #url #networking #telecomtech - YouTube
01:31
What is a URL? URL Components and How it Works - YouTube
What is a URL?
Ever wondered what a URL actually is? A URL (Uniform ...
03:15
What is a URL and its Components? Understanding how it works. - ...
00:50
What is a URL explained in simple language. - YouTube
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › URL
URL - Wikipedia
January 31, 2026 - A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as web address, is a reference to a resource on the World Wide Web. A URL specifies the location of a resource on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although ...
Oak Park Public Library
oppl.org › home › news & events › digital learning › tech tips: what is a url?
Tech Tips: What is a URL? - Oak Park Public Library
August 14, 2025 - URLs help us find things on the internet through the webpage. They define the structure of the website and how information is organized.
Verisign
verisign.com › what-we-do › what-is-a-url
What Is a URL?
Not to be confused with "domain name," the Uniform Resource Locator, or URL, is a web address that incorporates a domain name to direct a browser to a specific webpage.
Tech Monitor
techmonitor.ai › what-is › what-is-a-url
What is a URL? - Tech Monitor
March 15, 2023 - This is why it is also called a web address. Technically, a URL is a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/explainlikeimfive › eli5: what is a url and how does it work?
r/explainlikeimfive on Reddit: ELI5: What is a URL and how does it work?
February 12, 2016 -
Super kudos if you can explain different types of URLs.
Top answer 1 of 5
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A URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is generally just a fancy way of saying a web address. The various parts of the URL are used by all of the systems between you and what you're trying to access to figure out how to get you what you need. It gives you a protocol (how to access it) and the domain (where it is on the Internet) as well as the server address (where it is once you get to the right computer).
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A URL is a string of text that helps your computer locate a certain resource and informs it on how you want to access it. That is also literally what it stands for: Uniform Resource Locator. By looking at some URL examples, we can actually look at how they work: http://www.google.com/ This URL has two important parts: a protocol specification (HTTP) and a resource ( www.google.com ). What this URL basically tells your computer is that you want to access www.google.com via the HTTP protocol, which is used for web browsing. Your machine will automatically use port 80 for this, since this is the default port for http traffic. http://www.google.com:8080/ would tell your computer to access the resource www.google.com over the HTTP protocol but on a different, specific network port, in this case, port 8080 Although much less used these days, there are various other URLs that used to be more popular back in the day. Your computer will know what application to start for which protocol. For example: ftp://ftp.google.com/ will tell your computer that you want to use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to access the machine ftp.google.com. Because the protocol is now FTP, it will try to connect on port 21. mailto: john@google.com is another example of a url. By clicking on it, your computer will start your default system mail client with john@google.com already filled in as the recipient of the e-mail. Software developers can inform your system that they are able to handle certain urls, for example: teamspeak://my.teamspeakserver.net/ can make your computer start up your team speak client which will connect to my.teamspeakserver.net Hope this helps
Medium
medium.com › @ndbeladiya720 › what-is-a-url-example-structure-of-url-92cda07a9dcc
What is a URL? Example & Structure of URL | by Nikunj Beladiya | Medium
April 4, 2023 - When you type a URL into your web browser, your computer sends a request to a server that hosts the website. The server then sends back the HTML code for the webpage, which your browser renders into the visual content you see on your screen. The process of requesting and receiving web pages is known as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is the most common protocol used on the internet.
Combell
combell.com › en › help › kb › what-is-a-url
What is 'URL' and what can you do with it? - Combell Support
May 29, 2024 - When you think of a URL, you probably think of pages on the Internet, but URLs are actually used to refer to all kinds of data and files (in other words, ‘resources’), because the Internet is made up of all sorts of small pieces of data. And all these pieces of data, meaning every page but also every image on that page, have a URL.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/explainlikeimfive › eli5: what do all the characters in a url mean?
r/explainlikeimfive on Reddit: ELI5: What do all the characters in a URL mean?
May 26, 2024 -
A URL will be something like YouTube.com/r7@usq=616UUhF
What is all the jargon at the end?
Thanks in advance
Top answer 1 of 5
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It would have been a lot better if you just copy pasted a real YouTube URL, because that’s not what it looks like. The first part of the URL, before the ://, is the protocol, which determines how you are communicating with the server and what the data being sent means. For websites, it’s http (hypertext transfer protocol) or, for most modern sites, the encrypted https. But other protocols exist, like ftp (file transfer protocol), and other types of programs like databases use urls that start with, for example, mysql://. The next parts of the url are subdomain.domain.tld where tld stands for top level domain. You kind of read this part backwards, actually, since the tld is the biggest category and the subdomain is the most specific category. This basically says which server you’re communicating with. After the domain is whatever is after the slash / which is the path. It’s essentially the server’s responsibility to decide what to do with the path, but this often specifies the specific page on the server that you want to see. This is optional, and if you omit it, the server will just serve you the “root” page. Then another optional part comes after a question mark ?. This is the query, which is a standard way of giving the site specific extra parameters. The parameters are written as name=value and separated by ampersands &. This is extra information that is processed by the server. Some pages have required query parameters, and will give you an error if any are missing, but that’s all up to the server software. For YouTube, the most common query parameter is v which stands for the video ID. So you might see a query like ?v=3MKpDA56-LivQKhH which means “show the video with the ID “3MKpDA56-LivQKhH”. The video ID is basically just a random sequence of characters chosen by YouTube to uniquely identify the video (if they just used the title of the video, it could be too long, many videos could have the same title, the title could contain bad words or characters that some users’ computers don’t support etc., so it’s best for the server to choose its own random, unique identifier). Other parts of the query could tell the server how you got to the site. A link posted to social media might have referrer=twitter.com for example, so that when a user clicks that link, the server knows you came there from Twitter. And yes, it’s called Twitter. And that’s basically it. There’s also the # but that’s less commonly used these days.
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What they mean depends on the website in question. In the case of your YouTube example, those letters are just a unique ID tag for a specific video. They don't mean anything, themselves. However, for example, reddit organizes things differently. The URL for this post is " https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d1dszg/eli5_what_do_all_the_characters_in_a_url_mean/ ". "https://" is "How should your browser talk to this server?" "www.reddit.com" is "What server do I need to find to talk to?" And all of the rest is "What should I ask that server for?" The only meaning that has is what the reddit servers have decided they have, but it's very common to break these into parts with "/" like folders on your computer. In this case, we have: "r": "I want to look inside a specific subreddit" "explainlikeimfive": The name of the subreddit "comments": I want to look at the comments page for a post "1d1dszg": This is a random, meaningless, unique ID code, just like YouTube's "eli5_what_do_all_the_characters_in_a_url_mean": This one doesn't actually mean anything (you can even change it!), but reddit puts it on the end so that humans have a way to get a basic idea of what the post is about, since you and I can't look up the random ID code "1d1dszg" in our database (brain). There are other conventions like "after the '?' comes a list of "X=Y" pairs, encoded in a specific way that keeps them from being ambiguous, but ultimately it's up to the server to decide how it wants to interpret everything before the (optional) '#'. Anything after that isn't sent to the server at all. Your browser (and the page's javascript) use that for other purposes.
Seobility
seobility.net › home › wiki › web development › url
What is a URL? Definition and Components - Seobility Wiki
February 26, 2025 - A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a set address for locating a unique resource on the internet, such as a file or an app. It is recognizable for users as the string of text which is shown in the browser address bar of every web page, or which ...
MDN Web Docs
developer.mozilla.org › en-US › docs › Learn_web_development › Getting_started › Web_standards › How_the_web_works
How the web works - Learn web development | MDN
December 19, 2025 - Here it is", and then starts sending the website's files to the browser as a series of small chunks called packets. The browser assembles the small chunks into a complete web page and displays it to you. Real web addresses (URLs) aren't the nice, memorable strings you type into your address bar to find your favorite websites.
Ucartz
ucartz.com › home › what is a url?
What is a URL? | Understanding Web Addresses
June 25, 2025 - A URL is the internet address of a particular resource. It functions as a digital map, directing your browser to the exact webpage, image, movie, or other treasure found hidden in the vast reaches of the Internet.
Google Support
support.google.com › google-ads › answer › 14095
URL - Google Ads Help
A webpage's URL, such as http://support.google.com/google-ads, is made up of a domain name (here it's "google"), a domain category (".com"), and sometimes other elements like a subdomain ("support") and path ("/google-ads").
Lenovo
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Uncover the Basics of URLs - How Does a URL Work? | Lenovo US
Don’t miss out on the latest ... more details. ... Please review your cart as items have changed. ... A URL is a string of characters that serves as the address of a resource on the internet....
Popupsmart
popupsmart.com › digital marketing encyclopedia › what is a url (uniform resource locator)? - url definition
What is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator)? - URL Definition
July 1, 2024 - URL is the address of a website on the Internet. It indicates the location of a resource as well as the protocol used to access it.
Quora
quora.com › What-is-a-URL-and-how-does-it-work-What-are-the-functions-and-parts
What is a URL, and how does it work? What are the functions and parts? - Quora
Answer: URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is a formatted text string used by Web browsers, email clients and other software to identify a network resource on the Internet.
mail.com
mail.com › blog › posts › what-is-a-url › 110
What does URL mean? Functions and components
May 16, 2024 - You can think of it like this: HTTP sends data from your browser to the website you are using in a language everyone can understand, while HTTPS translates it to a language that a hacker is less likely to understand and then sends it. If you wish to learn more about this type of encryption, check out our blog post: What is an SSL certificate · In everyday speech, “URL” and “link” are often used interchangeably.
Dorik
dorik.com › blog › what-is-a-url
What is a URL? The Complete Beginner to Advanced Guide
July 23, 2025 - An absolute URL contains the full web address, including the scheme, domain, and path. For example: https://www.example.com/blog/article. This type of URL is complete on its own and can be used anywhere to link directly to a specific page.