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What is a URL?
The
URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of a website. It is one of the most basic ways to evaluate a website and might be
one of the first things you should look at. The URL will show you what type of website you are looking
at. This can give you a clue as to
whether you are more likely to be able to trust the information on a page, or
whether you need to carefully evaluate it.
The Structure of a URL
Here’s an example you may recognize: http://www.yahoo.com.
Most of you already know this is the URL for the website
Yahoo. Here's how it breaks down:
|
http |
www |
yahoo |
com |
| The
Protocol Identifier |
An other-level domain (sometimes called "subdomain") |
The second-level domain |
The
top-level domain (sometimes just called "domain") |
| This
tells your computer how to communicate with the website computers. A Web
page is always http or https. |
This is located to the left of the
second-level domain. Website creators sometimes use these to better
organize their site or make certain parts of it more memorable. |
This string of letters stands to the left of the top-level domain (or "dot").
Examples are yahoo, google, amazon, and wikipedia. These are
names that a person, company, institution or other entity has registered
for their exclusive use on the Web. |
This string of letters comes after a dot and at the end of the first part
of the URL. It precedes any slashes (/). The top-level domain
indicates in broad terms the type of website you are viewing. |
Often you will see longer URLs with slashes following the
top-level domain--for
instance, the word "preview" in
http://www.yahoo.com/preview/. These are sort of like folders on your
computer's hard
drive--ways of organizing the website's content. While they often tell you
something about the content of the page, they do not help you evaluate it.
Top-Level Domains
The top-level domain is a piece of the URL that can help you
evaluate the website.
It is important to note that the top-level domain always comes after the
protocol identifier (http://) but before any other slash (/). So, in a URL
such as
http://www.aboutus.org/LosRios.edu, org is the top-level domain, not edu.
A few top-level domains are reserved for certain
classes of owners. Because not just anyone can create such sites, they are often
especially useful in your research projects. These include:
| Domain |
Type |
Reliability |
Example |
| .gov |
U.S.
government site
|
Generally reliable.
|
Example: The IRS (http://www.irs.gov/) |
| .edu |
college, university, or other educational site
|
Generally reliable. However,
you should make sure that the information on an .edu site has not simply
been posted by an individual at that college or university.
|
Example:
Harvard
University
(http://www.harvard.edu/) |
Most other top-level domains can be registered by anybody, so you
cannot really use them to judge the reliability of a website. (Recall that a white supremacist organization was able to register the domain name martinlutherking.org!) These
unregulated domains include .com, .org, .net, .info,
.biz, and .us. Some of these top-level domains have conventional uses.
For instance, most non-profit organizations will choose to use .org URLs.
However, you cannot assume that all URLs ending in .org are non-profit
organizations.
You should always look at the URL when you're evaluating a website.
Finally,
before we finish up, let's think about using Wikipedia for research.
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