In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often, imprecisely and confusingly, used as a synonym for uniform resource identifier. The confusion in usage stems from historically different interpretations of the semantics of the terms involved.[2] In popular language a URL is also referred to as a Web address.
In its current strict technical meaning, a URL is a URI that, “in addition to identifying a resource, [provides] a means of locating the resource by describing its primary access mechanism (e.g., its network ‘location’).”