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The Internet and the World Wide Web: Question 8

Syllabus 5.1

Structured 6 marks

A student is reading a page about rainforests on the "GreenLeaf Nature" website, www.greenleafnature.org. Partway through the text, the words "Amazon Rainforest" are underlined, shown in a different colour from the rest of the text, and change the mouse pointer to a pointing hand; clicking them opens another page on the GreenLeaf Nature site itself. Elsewhere on the same page, a photograph of a toucan can also be clicked; doing so opens a page on a completely different website, www.birdwatch-global.com.

(a) State what is meant by a "hyperlink" on a web page. [1]

(b) Identify which of the two hyperlinks in this scenario, the "Amazon Rainforest" text or the toucan photograph, is an internal hyperlink and which is an external hyperlink. Justify your answer using the two web addresses given. [3]

(c) Explain one reason why it is useful for a reader to be able to tell, before clicking, whether a hyperlink is internal or external. [2]

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Worked solution

The World Wide Web is built from pages that link to one another, and a hyperlink is what makes this possible: a piece of text, an image, or another element on a web page that, when clicked, takes the user to another web page (or to a different part of the same page). The syllabus distinguishes the internet, the physical infrastructure, from the World Wide Web, the collection of linked pages; hyperlinks are exactly what tie those pages together into a “web”.

A hyperlink is described as internal if it leads to another page within the same website, and external if it leads to a page on a different website altogether. The way to tell which is which is to compare domain names:

  • The “Amazon Rainforest” text is an internal hyperlink. The page the student is currently viewing is on the domain www.greenleafnature.org, and clicking this hyperlink opens “another page on the GreenLeaf Nature site itself”, so the destination shares the same domain name.
  • The toucan photograph is an external hyperlink. Clicking it opens a page on www.birdwatch-global.com, a domain name completely different from www.greenleafnature.org, so the student is taken to a different website entirely.

Part (c): Why this distinction matters to a reader

Knowing in advance whether a hyperlink is internal or external tells the reader what to expect once they click it. An internal hyperlink keeps them on the same website, so they can expect the same overall design, navigation and level of trust as the page they are already reading. An external hyperlink takes them away to an entirely separate website, built and maintained by a different organisation, over which the original site has no control. A reader who can anticipate this can decide, for example, whether they are happy to leave the site they are currently reading before they click, rather than being taken somewhere unexpected.

Final answers

  • (a) A hyperlink is a clickable piece of text, image or other element on a web page that opens another web page (or another part of the same page).
  • (b) “Amazon Rainforest” is an internal hyperlink (same domain, www.greenleafnature.org); the toucan photograph is an external hyperlink (different domain, www.birdwatch-global.com).
  • (c) It lets the reader anticipate whether clicking will keep them on the trusted site they are already viewing, or take them to a completely separate website outside that site’s control.