Click here

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Click here" is a verb phrase that often appears as the link text of a hyperlink, or in an image used as a hyperlink, on a web page.

Many web publishers simply use the instinctive Click here link text to direct visitors to either another part of their site, or somewhere else on the Web. It is the equivalent to tick here or check here on a paper form. As such, this has led to the phrase being probably the most popular link text on the World Wide Web, besides the generic term homepage.

1 Criticism
2 Critics' recommendations
3 Popularity
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Criticism

Web design authorities have criticized the term, which many people regard as the mark of untrained web designers. These criticisms are mostly built on the reasons of accessibility, device dependence, non-informative, non-printability, redundancy, search indexing and trolling.

Accessibility: Visitors using screen readers (like Job Access With Speech or Window-Eyes) can make their reader read out just the hyperlinks on the page, including the option of tab scanning from link to link. Critics argue that links labeled "click here" are not self-explanatory and are difficult to use.
Device dependence: More devices are accessing the Web in different ways. To say "click here" might have worked in the beginnings of Web history for a device such as a mouse, but it is not currently a correct mechanical method for activating links with newer devices using touch pads, buttons, wheels, pen pointers, voice commands, etc.
Non-informative: People generally do not read online, they scan.[1] Using meaningful link text, rather than "click here", allows users to quickly see links on pages that might be of interest. It is common for web links to stand out against the text when pages are viewed in a web browser. It is generally more user-friendly for the stand-out text to directly contain the information regarding the link. For this reason, the World Wide Web Consortium, through its Quality Tips for Webmasters, advises web designers to avoid using "click here" as link text. [2]
Non-printability: Users may want to print web pages for reference. When pages with "click here" as the link text are printed out, "click here" might seem absurd for the person who is viewing the printout. For this reason, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, advises web designers through his Style Guide for online hypertext to "try to avoid references in the text to online aspect". [3]
Redundancy: Using the phrase "click here" for a link is redundant, critics say, because users already understand the link can be clicked upon. At a web page with twenty or more "click here" links, scanning such word repetition could be annoying.
Search indexing: Most all of the major search engines use not only meta descriptions, title, and body text to create a combined word relevance, but they also include words in hyperlinks for overall indexing and page ranking. Using "click here" to identify links will only hurt the indexing of web pages. Using a descriptive link text will better serve search engines in their determination of word strength.
Trolling: Internet trolls often disguise links to shock sites in deceptive, non-descriptive links to trick people into clicking on them. Although trolling can be deployed on any link, it is mentioned here because "click here" is a common and easy target.

[edit] Critics' recommendations

Critics of the "click here" convention advise web designers to ensure that linked text says something about the link's subject or destination. They also advise against using verb phrases as links, recommending, for example, linking the words registered member in "Become a registered member" instead of linking click here in "To become a registered member, click here".

In news articles that continue across several pages, links similar to "Click here" that read "More", "Continued", or "Full story" are common. Some also cite these as bad examples of link text, saying that the link text should include words describing the article's subject (and that the size of such an improved link could still be limited to a single line).

For clickable images, it is not necessary to use "click here" to get the user to understand the image is also a link. Designers should simply underline the subject, or non-verbal text on the image to relay it as being a clickable image.

A side benefit of these practices is the potential for corrected relevance and optimization within search engines. To help determine keyword relevance and strength, search engines will look for valid keywords within hyperlinks. They postulate that a word or phrase within those links is likely to be important and closely related to the subject matter of the page, therefore, content appropriate links can further emphasize the importance of keywords. "Click here" obviously provides no such useful information for a search engine, and is likely to be ignored due to its common misuse.

[edit] Popularity

Despite advice to avoid its usage, the term is popular on the Internet. Many languages other than English have similar phrases. For example, the Spanish version is haz clic aquí, German: klicken Sie hier, French: cliquez ici, or in Polish: kilknij tutaj.