What is a Query String?
A query string is a data container appended to your url address. Query strings provide a web surfer a way of passing information specific to the user to a particular web address. The host computer can parse the query string and send a customized result back to the surfer. Most basic example of a query string is the google search engine. Google listens for search requests through the query string. In google’s case they use ‘q’ as the identifier for their search string. If ‘q’ is full, google knows the user is requesting a web search for the value of ‘q’. So if ‘q’ was sent to google with the value of “frog” Google knows to send results for frog like so. http://www.google.com/search?q=frog. Thanks to the query string you can send yourself to google or any other site by pre-filling the desired variable.
