Guessing Uniform Resource Locaters

Basic Principle #1: Think of the organization most likely to provide an answer to your question. Then try to go directly to their Web site.

Try guessing the central URL for the organization.

  1. Leave off http://
  2. Try the common www to start the machine address
  3. Use the name, acronym, or brief name of the organization (nra, honda, uwyo) in the middle
  4. Add the appropriate top level domain, most often .com. See a complete list of country codes (ccTLDs) or try one of the following common endings:

    com for commercial
    net for networks, but can be used by anyone
    edu for U.S. higher education
    org for other organizations, but can be used by anyone
    mil for U.S. military
    gov for U.S. federal government
    int for international organizations established by treaties
    .state.XX.us for U.S. state governments, but .us is now open for anyone

    A few newer (and less common) ones include :
    biz for businesses
    info is open for anyone
    name for personal pages
    museum for museums
    travel for the travel industry
    See complete list (click the gTLDs link)


Now let's try the Exercises

URL guessing can help in finding pages for URLs that no longer work and links that lead to dead ends. Try trimming off parts of the URL starting on the right-hand side and stopping at every /


Last updated on Oct. 28, 2008
©1998-2008 Greg R. Notess, Reference Librarian