URL normalization
URL normalization maps syntactic variants to a consistent identity before deduplication and scheduling.
How it works
Common steps include resolving relative links, removing fragments, normalizing host casing and default ports, and applying a deliberate query-parameter policy.
How to validate it
Store both the discovered string and normalized fetch target, then test fragments, trailing slashes, parameter order, and percent-encoding independently.
Common failure
Over-aggressive normalization can merge distinct resources, while no normalization can turn one page into an effectively infinite crawl space.
Machine-readable editions
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