People use these three words interchangeably. They’re not the same thing — and treating them as if they are leads to real confusion when one of them goes missing, stops working, or behaves unexpectedly.

Here’s what each one actually is.

A link

A link is a pointer. Text or an image on a webpage that, when clicked, takes you somewhere else. It could go to another page on the same site, a different site entirely, a document, a video, or a downloadable file. The link itself is just directions — it says “go here.” It doesn’t contain the destination. It points to it.

This matters because a link can stop working without anyone touching it. If the page it points to moves, is deleted, or the website shuts down, the link still exists — but it now points to nothing. You click it, you get an error. The link didn’t break. The destination disappeared. That’s called link rot, and it’s extremely common on the internet over time.

A bookmark

A bookmark is an address you deliberately saved in your browser so you could find it again. Not the page itself — the address. Like writing a restaurant’s address on a notepad. The notepad isn’t the restaurant. It just tells you where to go.

A few things that follow from this:

• Bookmarks live inside your browser — not on the internet, not in your account, not somewhere safe by default. They live in Chrome, or Edge, or Firefox, on that specific computer.
• Get a new computer and your bookmarks don’t come with it unless you exported them or had sync turned on.
• Switch browsers and your bookmarks don’t transfer. Chrome’s notepad and Firefox’s notepad are separate notebooks.
• If the website the bookmark points to disappears, the bookmark still exists — it just leads nowhere useful now. The address is still on your notepad. The restaurant closed.

Browser history

History is the automatic record your browser keeps of everywhere you’ve been — whether you meant to save it or not. Every website you visit gets logged: the address, the date, the time, how many times you returned. You didn’t create this record consciously. The browser made it in the background, because it can be useful.

Useful in two ways: finding something you visited but didn’t bookmark, and letting the browser auto-complete addresses you’ve typed before. It’s a trip log, not a curated collection.

History lives on your device, visible to anyone who uses your browser. It can be cleared — either selectively or entirely. “Private browsing” or “incognito mode” simply means the browser won’t write anything to the history for that session. You’re still going where you’re going. It’s just not being recorded on that device.

Why bookmarks disappear — and what to do about it

This is the one that generates the most distress. Someone has spent years carefully bookmarking websites — news sources, medical information, favorite stores, reference pages they use regularly. Then something changes: a new computer, a browser reset, an update that didn’t go smoothly — and the bookmarks are gone.

They weren’t backed up because nobody told them bookmarks needed to be backed up. They feel like they should just be there, like the websites themselves. But they weren’t on the websites. They were in the browser. And the browser is gone or reset.

Two things prevent this:

• Browser sync. Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari all offer the ability to sync your bookmarks to an account — Google, Microsoft, Firefox, or Apple. Turn this on and your bookmarks follow you to any device where you’re signed into the same account. New computer, sign in, bookmarks reappear.
• Export. Every browser has an option to export your bookmarks as a file. Do this occasionally and save the file somewhere safe — your documents folder, a cloud backup. If everything else fails, you can import that file into any browser and recover your collection.

The desktop shortcut — a fourth thing people confuse for the others

A shortcut on your desktop that opens a website looks like a bookmark and behaves like a link. It’s technically neither — it’s a small file on your computer that contains the web address and tells your browser to open it. It goes to the same place as a bookmark would, but it lives on your desktop rather than inside your browser.

When people say “I had a shortcut to my bank on the desktop and it’s gone,” they usually mean one of three things: the shortcut file was deleted, the browser that handled it was changed, or the computer was replaced. The bank’s website is still there. The pointer to it was lost.

When a link says “page not found”

A 404 error — “page not found” — means your browser successfully reached the website but the specific page you asked for doesn’t exist there anymore. The site is up. That particular address isn’t.

This happens when websites reorganize, rename pages, or delete content. The link you clicked — or the bookmark you saved — pointed to the old address. Sometimes the site has moved the content somewhere new and you can find it by going to the site’s homepage and searching. Sometimes the content is simply gone.

It’s not your computer. It’s not your browser. The address changed or disappeared on the other end.