What, exactly is a web address??
Similar to a postal address:
123 Main St. Flushing, NY 11367
Because there are many Main Streets in the U.S., a letter needs an exact postal address in order to reach its destination. In the same way, you need an exact URL in order to reach your desired destination on the Internet.
Anatomy of a WWW Address
A web address is known as a
URL = U niform R esource L ocator = "path to a file on the Internet."
Hyper text transfer protocol: the set of rules for exchanging files (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) on the World Wide Web. (hyper text is a way of presenting information online with connections between one piece of information and another.)
Domain Name consists of server.institution.domain . Domain examples: .edu .org .gov .com .net .ml .uk .ca etc. The more reliable sources will most likely have an .edu (educational institution/affliation), .org (nonprofit organization), or .gov (government) domain.
The Path typically indicates folders/directories where pages are stored on the server, in the root folder; it is the file structure of the website.
Tip: Truncate back the URL. Manipulating a URL can assist you in finding the source of information or a page that might have been relocated.