Glossary
Bookmarks/Favourites: most browsers provide a facility for users to save links to frequently-visited sites to avoid having to type the address into the search bar every time.
Browser: software used to view web pages, e.g. Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox.
Domain name: the part of a URL (web address) that is intended to give information on the type of website and its origin.
Homepage: the ‘front page’ of a website where the site’s designer intends that people visiting the site should arrive first.
Internet: a global system of interconnected computer networks.
Search engine: a software system designed to search the World Wide Web for information in response to a user query.
URL: “Uniform Resource Locator” – also known as a “web address” is the unique internet address of a web page, e.g. www.ukmi.org.uk.
World Wide Web: a global collection of documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs.
Domain Names
The domain name is a website’s basic address, which usually goes to its homepage, e.g. sps.nhs.uk. This is composed of various parts: the site-specific part, the top-level domain, and possibly also a country code.
Top Level Domain (TLD)
This is the domain extension, e.g. .com, or .org. It is intended to provide some information about what type of website this is:
- .com was originally intended to be used by 'for-profit' business sites, but is now used for all kinds of sites. (.co.uk is the UK equivalent).
- .org is for non-profit organisations (.org.uk is the UK equivalent).
- .gov is for government sites. (.gov.uk is the UK equivalent).
There are many more TLDs nowadays than in the early days of the web (e.g. .pub for bars and pubs, although some publishers use it too!).
The NHS has its own TLD, which only NHS organisations are permitted to use: .nhs.uk.
Country code TLD
These are suffixes which are intended to indicate the country in which the website is registered, or the nationality of the registrant (different countries have different rules for this). For example, .uk for United Kingdom sites.
Many USA sites do not use the .us suffix; the absence of a country code may indicate that the site is American (or may not).
There are more country codes than there are official countries: for instance, there are codes for the European Union (.eu) and Antarctica (.aq).
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains
Browsers
A browser is the software you use to view web pages: your window into the internet. There are several browsers available; they each have their advantages and disadvantages.
The most commonly used are:
- Chrome (Google)
- Microsoft Edge (Microsoft)
- Mozilla Firefox (Mozilla Foundation)
- Safari (Apple)
Private Browsing
Most browsers offer some form of ‘private browsing’. Many people believe that this protects them from being tracked online, but this is not the case.
Normally, as you move through the internet in an ordinary browser session, your browser will keep a history of where you have been (in case you want to go there again), cookies from websites, and data you input into forms so you can autocomplete later. All of these aspects make your online time a little easier and more convenient. However, there may be times when you do not want your browser to save this data, for security or privacy reasons – particularly if you are entering sensitive data onto a shared computer.
The answer to this is ‘private browsing’ (also known as ‘Incognito Mode’ on Chrome), where the browser will not save this data after you close the session.
What ‘private browsing’ does not do is hide your identity or location, or prevent the internet sites you visit (including search engines) from tracking you or collecting your personal data.
Cookies
HTTP cookies (web cookies, internet cookies, etc.) are not baked goods. A ‘cookie’ is a small piece of data which the website sends to your computer, and which your computer stores in your web browser. They were originally (and still are) used for essential functions such as remembering the items in your internet shopping basket, and knowing whether you are logged into a website or not.
However, cookies can also be used to track internet usage and thus compile a long-term record of a user’s internet use history.
Search Engines
A search engine is software designed to search the world wide web for information in response to the user’s query.
As the world wide web comprises billions of web pages, this creates several problems:
- How does the search engine know the page exists?
- How does the search engine know that the page is relevant to the search?
- How does the search engine sort the results of the search into a useful order?
Websites are added to a search engine’s results automatically (rather than having to be manually submitted) when the search engine’s ‘spider’ (software which is designed to find new websites and evaluate their place in the web) ‘crawls’ the web and finds it.
Once a search engine knows about a webpage, it will evaluate its content by finding keywords (used either openly in the webpage itself, or in the metadata ‘behind’ the web page). Some examples of search engines are:
- Bing
- DuckDuckGo
- Yahoo
Metasearch Engines
Metasearch engines are like search engines of search engines. A metasearch engine searches multiple search engines at once; this may increase coverage, but as all search engines do not handle enquiries in the same way, it is best to keep search terms simple.
As the search engines searched by a metasearch engine may be small or obscure, a metasearch engine should be used in addition to a search of major search engine(s), rather than as a substitute for it.
Metasearch engines include www.dogpile.com
Saving Links and Web Addresses
There are a number of websites you will return to multiple times. It is inefficient to type the address into the browser search bar every time, so it is preferable to save the web address so that you only have to click on it.
The usual way to do this is to locate your browser’s bookmarks/favourites functionality.
Once you get beyond a certain number of bookmarks, you will need to organise them into order; into folders is probably best, so you can keep all the ‘adverse drug reaction’ websites in one place.
It is useful to have a departmental list of bookmarks, which you can download and send to new members of staff when they join the department. Each browser will have a way to do this.
There are also bookmarking sites (e.g. Pinboard.in) which have additional, or different, functionality. You may have to pay for these.
Last Reviewed: Oct 2026
