Pet Peeve: “Click Here” Links

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“For more information, click here.” Where does this link go? Well, in this case, that link goes straight to hell. Actually, hell.com. The “click here” link is about the most useless way of providing text for a hyperlink. It tells me absolutely nothing about what’s going to happen when I activate it. Is my computer going to blow up? Am I going to be asked to register for some service? All I know is that the web author wants me to click it.

In this category for exactly the same reason is the “this page” or “this site” or “this post” link. It means, roughly, “click here.” Vacuous and useless.

Web authors, please stop. Tell me more information, so I know if that’s a web page I want to load before I activate your link. Also, this makes web search engines like Google work way better.

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One Response to “Pet Peeve: “Click Here” Links”

1. 

   Tim Says:
   March 9th, 2006 at 3:39 pm

   Having meaningful link text also helps blind users. Various screen readers have a mode that skips through the page reading just the link text. Although it can be annoying for sighted users to see click here links, they at least benefit from context. Imagine how annoying it can be for visually impaired users to hear a page’s worth of “click here”.