URL

A Uniform Resource Locator, or URL, is a standardized address for some resource (such as a document or image) on the Internet. First created by Tim Berners-Lee for use on the World Wide Web, the currently used forms are detailed by IETF standard RFC 2396 (1998).

The URL was a fundamental innovation in creating the World Wide Web. It combines into one simple address the three basic items of information necessary to find a document anywhere on the Internet:

• The machine or domain name to go to
• The path or file name on that machine
• The protocol to use to communicate with that machine

A typical simple URL can look like:

  http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/RecentChanges

where

 http: tells the protocol to use
 //www.wikipedia.com tells the domain name to contact
 /wiki/RecentChanges tells the path to request on that system