"at a URL" or "on a URL"?

Question

I have to write "you can find ... on http://www.blablabla.com". But I am unsure, if I should write "on" or "at". May anybody help me with that?

I'd generally use "at", but I don't think the P-ists have acknowledged the existence of the Internet yet. — Hot Licks, Nov 07 '14 at 17:14
Welcome to EL&U. Both forms are used; on if you think of the URL as a publication, at if a location. The previous questions “On website” or “at website”? and “This question has been asked at Stack Overflow” vs. “on Stack Overflow” may be informative. — choster, Nov 07 '14 at 17:18
Thanks a lot for the links! Unfortunately, my question is a duplicate... I had actually searched for, but I should have replace 'URL' with 'website'... — T-800, Nov 07 '14 at 17:24
@choster : I think of Web sites (and parts thereof) as publications, which are located at their respective URLs. So I'm currently responding to material on Stack Exchange, at http://stackexchange.com. :) — PM 2Ring, Nov 08 '14 at 04:43

score 14 · Accepted Answer · edited May 28 '19 at 19:23

"At url" would be the idiomatic way to say this.

For these sorts of questions google ngram is your friend. There you see that the usage of "at" occurs and "on" does not.

One of the commenters is correct though, when you are talking about a web site by name rather than by url you can say either "at StackOverflow" or "on StackOverflow" but the latter is more common. Again, using "cnn.com" as an example, google ngram votes clearly for "on" but certainly allows for "at".

"at a URL" or "on a URL"?

1 Answers1