How will end users know what link to follow?

Resolvers may provide links to multiple resources. Some will be human readable, others machine-readable. Some links will lead to public resources, for others the user will need to be authorised.

The good news is that an end consumer is very unlikely ever to see all the available links.

For each GS1 key, there will be a default destination. This might be a product description page or a current promotional page. This is what the resolver will redirect the user to unless there is a reason not to, that is, unless there is information that some other behaviour is required.

For example, an application might be one that offers recipe ideas, in which case when it looks up an item on a resolver (perhaps after scanning a barcode), it will include information in the request that declares that it is only interested in recipes. In this case, the resolver will redirect immediately to the recipe page (if it knows of one). Otherwise it will redirect to the default.

In order to see a complete list of links associated with the identifier, the application will have to specifically ask for the list. Again, it’s unlikely that a consumer-facing application would ever present such a list to an end user. Rather, it will filter the list and only present links likely to be of interest to their user.