A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

Uniform (universal) 

resource locator 

(URL)

A web address used to 

locate a web page on a 

web server.

URL strategy

A defined approach to 

forming URLs, including 

the use of capitalisation, 

hyphenation and  sub- 

 domains for different 

brands and different 

locations. This has 

implications for promoting 

a website offline through 

promotional or vanity 

URLs, search engine 

optimisation and 

findability.

A clean URL which fits 

many of these aims is 

http://www.domain.com/

folder-name/document-

name. Care must be 

taken with capitalisation 

since Linux servers parse 

capitals differently from 

 lower-  case  letters.

Box 3.2

What’s in a URL?

A great example of different URL components is provided by Google engineer Matt 

Cutts (Cutts, 2007). He gives this example:

http://video.google.co.uk:80/videoplay?docid=-7246927612831078230&hl=en#00

h02m30s

Here are some of the components of the URL:

● 

The protocol is http. Other protocols include https, ftp, etc.

● 

The host or hostname is video.google.co.uk.

● 

The subdomain is video.

● 

The domain name is google.co.uk.

● 

The  top-  level domain or TLD is uk (also known as gTLD). The uk domain is also 

referred to as a  country-  code  top-  level domain or ccTLD. For google.com, the TLD 

would be com.

● 

The  second-  level domain (SLD) is co.uk.

M03_CHAF6542_06_SE_C03.indd   91

7/22/14   1:36 AM

---

92