The term for a unique address used to identify a resource on the internet is URL, short for Uniform Resource Locator.
A URL tells software both where a resource can be found and how it can be accessed. In https://www.example.com/page.html, “https” identifies the access protocol, “www.example.com” identifies the host, and “/page.html” identifies the path. URLs can point to web pages, images, downloads, APIs, and many other resources.
URLs are a specific kind of URI, or Uniform Resource Identifier. The terms are often used interchangeably in everyday browsing, but URI is the broader category. A URN, such as a persistent book identifier, names a resource without necessarily describing where or how to retrieve it. DNS is different again: it translates human-readable domain names into network addresses.
Tim Berners-Lee and the IETF’s URI working group defined the URL concept in the early 1990s. The first URL specifications were published in 1994, helping create a consistent addressing system for the growing World Wide Web.