Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

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A Uniform Resource Locator, or URL is the address of a specific location on the web.  As explained by the Computer Security Resource Center, a URL is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A typical URL could have the form http://www.example.com/index.html, which indicates a protocol (http), a host name (www.example.com), and a file name (index.html). 

For example, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution is the URL for U.S. Constitutional law on LII’s website.

URL is also sometimes simply referred to as a web address.

[Last updated in August of 2021 by the Wex Definitions Team]