The URL is the address you type in your Internet web browser that has a name like www.dwightwatt.com to get to different web pages.

The URL is an abbreviation for Universal Resource Locator, and it is a way you locate your resources (web pages) on the Internet

A simple address used in the URL box (which is at top of your browser (could be Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, etc.) could also be longer.

The basic address like www.dwightwatt.com has three parts that each mean something.

The first part is quite often www but could be other things tells the browser what is the name of the server that has the web page it wants.

The second part, in my example dwightwatt is the domain name of the webpage. This is a name that is bought by people and organizations and is used to identify their group or network. I bought dwightwatt.com as it is easy way for people to find my web page

The third part is the type of organization is what it originally was. In some cases it still is, .gov are government sites, .edu are accredited colleges (although some got grandfathered in before rule took effect. .org was non-profit, but anyone can now get. There are a lot more types been added in the last few years.

Beyond those three you may see more items separated by slashes (/). This is specifically pointing to folders and files on the server. By default if no file name given usually it brings up a file called index.html For instance to go directly to my articles page on my web site you could enter http://www.dwightwatt.com/dwatt/articles/articles.html However certain threat actors will put domain name looking fodders in the file/folder names to fool people into going to malicious sites. Make sure the first part before the first slash is a site you want to go to.