naming the parts - of a URL...

Date Published 14/08/2007 - Click here for more recent news

This is a straight swipe from the Matt Cutts' blog entry titled 'Talk like a Googler:  parts of a url' @ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/2007/08/ and here at EASIserv.com we make no apologies for lifting it (almost verbatim); because it focuses and brings greater clarity to something that confuses many (non-technical-types) in the Internet world.......what do those stupendously long sets of hieroglyphics in the address bar actually stand for?

We've taken Matt's very detailed response and just presented it slightly differently in a tabular format - with the sole purpose of better aiding understanding...(not that his wasn't perfectly understandable before, you know...!).  Incidentally, if you follow the long URL used in the example - you'll end up on one of Matt Cutt's talking-head videos, and you'll be able to see what a lovely fellow he really is! 

URL is http://video.google.co.uk:80/videoplay?docid=-7246927612831078230&hl=en#00h02m30s
above is a valid uniform resource locator (URL) that has lots of components: Google typically refers to different parts of the a URL as shown below:
Component	Description
http	is the protocol – other protocols include https, ftp, etc.
video.google.co.uk	is the host or hostname
video	is the sub-domain
google.co.uk	is the domain name
uk	is the top-level domain (or TLD) is uk; the uk domain is also referred to as a country-code top-level domain (or ccTLD) - for google.com, the TLD would be com.
co.uk	is the second-level domain (SLD)
:80	is the port; which is the default port for web servers.  Other ports are possible; a web server can listen on port 8000, for example.  When the port is 80, most people leave out the port.
/videoplay	is the path; this typically refers to a file or location on the web server, e.g. /directory/file.html
docid	is the name of one the URL’s parameters
-7246927612831078230	is the value of the particular docid parameter.  URLs can have lots parameters.  Parameters start with a question mark (?) and are separated with an ampersand (&).
#00h02m30s	is called a fragment or a named anchor.  Typically, the fragment is used to refer to an internal section within a web document.  In this case, the named anchor means “skip to a place in the video at zero hours 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the video”.

 

What is a static URL –v- a dynamic URL?

Technically, Google considers a static URL to be a document that can be returned by a web server without the web server doing any computation.  A dynamic URL is a document that requires the web server to do some computation before returning the web document.

 

Some people simplify static URL –v- a dynamic URL to an easier question: “does the URL have a question mark in its string?”  If the URL l has a question mark, it’s usually considered dynamic; no question mark in the URL often implies a static URL.  That’s not a hard and fast rule though.  For example, URLs that look static like http://news.google.com/ may require some computation by the web server.  Most people just refer to URL s as static or dynamic based on whether it has a question mark though.

 

Anyways, that's the end of Matt's splendid piece and if you've followed all of the above, you'll now be able to... "Talk like a Googler" - should the need ever arise? 

 

EASIserv.com Personal PostScript about something totally different: whilst reading (and slightly tweaking Matt's post) - his use in the title of.... 'parts of a URL' jogged the old memory banks here at EASIserv.com and put us in mind of that very moving Henry Reed, World War II poem, Naming of Parts first published in 1946.  For those who've never read this poem, we'd recommend a first-time read: if you've already read it but not for a while - give it a revisit.  Like us, you may be surprised how those self-same phrases continue to have such significant resonance and currency - some 60 years later.

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