Why "Click here" is bad linking practice
Web pages often contain links like "Click here" or just "here".
This document explains why such usage is bad practice, especially for
accessibility reasons.
The incitement for writing this was a discussion in the
WAI IG mailing list
under the heading
Click here.
For general information on accessibility,
click... no, wait, I mean: There is general information on accessibility on
the pages of the Web Accessibility Initiative,
WAI.
- "Click here" just looks stupid.
- "Click here" looks especially stupid when printed on
paper.
- "Click here" is useless in a
list of links or when in "links reading"
mode,
or whenever a link text is considered as isolated from its textual
and visual context.
The problems of link texts out of context will
be discussed in more detail below.
- "Click here" is bad food for search engines.
If you say
"For information on pneumonia, click here",
search engines won't know that your document contains a link to a document
about pneumonia. Some important search engines use the link text in
estimating the relevance of a link. Using descriptive link texts thus helps
users in finding documents they're interested in, potentially
including your document due to a link text with some key word.
- There's usually a fairly simple way to do things better.
Instead of the text
"For information on pneumonia, click here",
you could simply write
"pneumonia information".
- "Click here" is device-dependent. There are several ways
to follow a link, with or without a mouse. Users probably
recognize what you mean, but you are still conveying the message
that you think in a device-dependent way.
Section
Link text in
HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines 1.0 says, among other things:
Good link text should not be overly general; don't use "click here." Not only is this phrase device-dependent (it implies a pointing device) it says nothing about what is to be found if the link if followed. Instead of "click here", link text should indicate the nature of the link target, as in "more information about sea lions" or "text-only version of this page". - -
"Auditory users" -- people who are blind, have difficulty seeing, or who are using devices with small or no displays -- are unable to scan the page quickly with their eyes. To get an overview of a page or to quickly find a link, these users will often tab from one link to the next or review a list of available links on a page.
In the early days of the Web, the use of "click here" was defended
on the grounds that users wouldn't otherwise know what to do. That is,
authors thought that users needed hints on the elementary use of their
browsers. Do you wish to get associated with that, with the
presumptions of the era when Web browsers were something exotic?
Mental exercise:
Imagine that pages generally contained phrases like "whistle to follow link",
in a world where voice-controlled browsers are common (as they might be
in the future). If you were using such a browser, the phrase would
hardly do any good, since you most probably
already knew how to follow links; it would just irritate to some extent.
If you were using a different browser, well, you might find yourself
alienated.
But of course it is relevant to users to recognize links as links.
The mistake of using "click here" is often made as an attempt to reduce
the harm caused by a different mistake: preventing links from looking like
links. For example, if you use an image as a link and try and prevent the
browser from drawing a border around it, or if you use style sheets to
prevent from being underlined and/or not appearing in a distinctive color,
then you might think you need to say "click here". But it's much better
to fix the original mistake. For a lot more about such issues, refer to
the treatise Links Want To Be Links.
On a Web page, links appear in contexts, such as in a list of links,
or as adjacent to an image, or some text around. In fact, "click here"
as link text presumes that there is some textual context that explains
what the link refers to. The basic reason for avoiding "click here"
is that there is no need to make such assumptions, which are often
false in different modes of use.
Web pages are very often designed so that reading a page sequentially
from the start till the end is rather uncomfortable. A user who
wants to get a quick idea of the content can usually skim over the
headings, emphasized phrases, links, and other prominent parts,
then perhaps follow a link that points to a page he really needs.
But such use is impossible to people who cannot see, or are otherwise
using the page in non-visual mode, or are confused with the structure or
the presentation of a complex page. Hence, various tools for the blind,
for example, need to give users options for doing something that corresponds
to "skimming over", e.g. to get a list all headings or
the list of all links.
Several browsers and other programs can automatically generate
a list of links on a page, based on the markup for links and on the
link texts.
The list might be displayed on screen, printed on paper (perhaps as
"references" at the end of the output), or read aloud.
A browser could also have a "links reading mode" where the user can
tab from one link to another and have the links read for him.
Even for browsers that have no such features built in, you could
install one, provided that you a willing to allow JavaScript execution;
in Ian's favelets at the
Accessify.com site,
there is a utility that you can easily
install so that it can be used via a browser menu whenever you wish
to get a list of links on any page.
A list of links might or might not be accompanied with
the presentation of the address (URL) that the link refers to or
with the value of an eventual title attribute in the
<a href> element. It is safest to assume that
it is not, i.e. that the link text needs to "stand alone".
The list could in alphabetic order, or in the order in which the
links appear in the document.
Apparently, "click here" does not work at all when isolated from its
context. If you have several links with that text,
the list looks very silly and is not of much use.
Wouldn't a title attribute help?
Some Web developers are arguing that adding the
title attribute with
explanatory text resolves any problems
with link texts. This is a false assumption on several grounds:
- The
title attribute, even if supported by a browser,
might not be noticed at all by a user. Typically, it becomes visible
only when you mouse over a link.
- The
title attribute is poorly implemented in
most browsers. Typically, it is displayed in a small
popup window using a small font. (The font can be increased by changing
system settings, but most users never heard of this.)
- The
title attribute is used for a multitude of purposes,
including miscellaneous notes and advertisements. Therefore, users cannot
know that it is meant to act as a link name.
- The
title attribute has no effect in many situations,
including normal printing of a document. Yet it would surely be useful
to see from a print copy what the page links to.
Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context -- either on its own or as part of a sequence of links. Link text should also be terse.
For example, in HTML, write "Information about version 4.3" instead of "click here". - -
Tim Berners-Lee,
now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium,
wrote, in his classical
Style Guide for online hypertext, section
Printable Hypertext:
Try to avoid references in the text to online aspects. "See the section on
device independence" is better
than "For more on device independence, click
here.". In fact we are talking
about a form of device
independence.
The document
Don't use "click here" as link text, which is part of
Quality Tips for Webmasters by the
W3C, says:
When calling the user to action, use brief but meaningful link text
that:
- provides some information when read out of context
- explains what the link offers
- doesn't talk about mechanics
- is not a verb phrase
Jakob Nielsen, the usability expert, has written,
in his alertbox Accessible Design for Users With Disabilities:
Users with dyslexia may have problems reading long pages - -.
Selecting words with high information content as hypertext anchors will help these users, as well as blind users, scan for interesting links (no "click here", please).