What is an absolute link?

There are three ways to define the destination of a hyperlink (where ‘destination’ is a webpage, image, anchor, etc.).

The destination anchor hypertext reference (href) value, or path, can be:

absolute,

relative, or

root-relative

An absolute link is created when the href value is a fully qualified URL, including:

the transfer protocol: http://

domain name: e.g. www.yourdomain.co.uk

and filename: e.g. yourpage.html

An absolute link to the Motive homepage looks like this:
<a href="http://www.anything.co.uk/index.php">Anything homepage</a>
An absolute href value must be used when linking between websites; when the source and destination anchors are under different domain names.

Related terms: anchor, deep-link, directory, domain name, hyperlink, HTTP, reciprocal link, referrer