URL normalization

URL normalization is the process by which URLs are modified and standardized in a consistent manner.

Description

The goal of the normalization process is to transform a URL into a normalized URL so it is possible to determine if two syntactically different URLs may be equivalent.

Search engines employ URL normalization in order to assign importance to web pages and to reduce indexing of duplicate pages. Web crawlers perform URL normalization in order to avoid crawling the same resource more than once.

Web browsers may perform normalization to determine if a link has been visited or to determine if a page has been cached.

See also

• Uniform Resource Locator
• Web browser
• Web cache
• Web search engine

External links

• URL normalization @ Wikipedia