Persistent Uniform Resource Locator

A Persistent Uniform Resource Locator (PURL) is technically a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), but rather than pointing directly to the internet site that it is refers to, it points to an intermediate resolution service. The resolution services associates the PURL with the actual URL and redirects the client to that URL. PURLs were developed to deal with the problem of the changing nature of internet resources that can make URLs inaccessible.