If you understand the words in web addresses it can help you understand more about the site you are visiting.

That can be useful, for example, if you want to choose a company's website that is nearer to you.

Let's say you wanted to visit the UK website for your washing machine's manufacturer - understanding how the web address works will help you choose the site from their UK office.

URL

The technical name for web addresses is URL. When the internet first started technical people were in charge so that's why they didn't just use a simple word like address!

Every different file on the internet needs an address so that it can be found by programs.

The address has a number of different parts and if it's correctly typed in the address or location box before you press 'enter', your browser will know how to find it.

Why web addresses look so strange

Web addresses have three sections

1. The first bit is 'http:'. This tells your browser that it is looking for a web page but nowadays it's enough just to write the address 'www.bbc.co.uk'.
2. The second bit is the name of the 'domain' that stores the file you've requested. Every computer on the internet has a name. The BBC's is 'bbc.co.uk'.
3. Finally, the URL tells you the name of the file, for example 'index.shtml'.

When you put them together you have a unique name for everything on the internet - every web page address is different. Don't worry if you don't see a file name at the end, as in www.bbc.co.uk. The computer will just return the homepage for the site.