Editing URL redirection (section)

{{Short description|Technique for making a Web page available under more than one URL address}}
{{for|URL redirection on Wikipedia|Wikipedia:Redirect}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2020}}'''URL redirection''', also called '''URL forwarding''', is a [[World Wide Web]] technique for making a [[web page]] available under more than one [[Uniform Resource Locator|URL]] address. When a [[web browser]] attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened. Similarly, domain redirection or domain forwarding is when all pages in a URL [[Domain name|domain]] are redirected to a different domain, as when [https://www.wikipedia.com/ wikipedia.com] and [https://www.wikipedia.net/ wikipedia.net] are automatically redirected to [https://www.wikipedia.org/ wikipedia.org].

URL redirection is done for various reasons:
* for [[URL shortening]];
* to prevent [[link rot|broken links]] when web pages are moved;
* to allow multiple domain names belonging to the same owner to refer to a single [[website|web site]];
* to guide navigation into and out of a website;
* for privacy protection (such as redirecting [[YouTube]] and [[Twitter]] links to [[Invidious]] and [[Nitter]] respectively or to turn [[Accelerated Mobile Pages|AMP]] links into normal links); and
* for hostile purposes such as [[phishing]] attacks or malware distribution.