What is “here”?

To the web authors who link the word “here”,

I’ll just say it: please stop that.

It’s an issue as old as the Web. If you’re still doing this, you’re making everyone’s lives harder.

Why linking “here” is bad

If you are linking “here” yourself, you may think there is no problem with what you’re doing. The link works, the user can click it.

But you’re a user too.

You’ve definitely been on a page where you needed a link, a download, a next step… yet you couldn’t find it quickly because the page didn’t make it obvious what was clickable or where it would lead.

When browsing, people don’t read whole pages top to bottom—they scan. People aren’t computers—users skim webpages looking for “hot spots” to click, tap, or select.

“Here” describes nothing. It’s not a destination, an action, or a promise—it’s merely pointing at a vague concept of clicking. A link should answer a simple question, “Where am I going?” And “here” never does.

Poor accessibility

You may not be using a screen reader, but someone will.

Screen eaders users navigate by pulling up a list of links on a page. In other words, they skim too, perhaps even more efficiently than sighted users.

Yet all you’re giving them are lists like this:

At this point, it’s more noise than navigation. This tells them nothing and makes navigation frustrating or impossible.

It defeats the purpose of the web

This is the part that should feel embarrassing.

The old idea of hypertext is a link is part of the writing, not just an accessory or an after thought. Every link is a decision at the sentence level.

A good link is a promise: what is leads to, why it exists, and what kind of things it is.

“Here” sounds more like just a placeholder.

It’s bad for SEO and search

Search engines, in-app or in-page search, and crawlers treat link text as a hint of what the destination is about or what it does.

But if every link says “here”, you’re telling machines, “Hey, here’s just a bunch of links.”

Your users won’t benefit from that and neither will your future self.

Linking URLs isn’t better

You know what’s just as bad as linking “here”? Linking the actual URL.

To illustrate:

Okay, maybe the user is a developer who can skim the URL shown to them and guess what the link leads. But not every user can read URLanese and they shouldn’t need to. URLs are fragile and often change, and people normally don’t read them for meaning.

Link text is what the humans read, like writing.

Better links (to stop the suffering)

Hypertext writing is an art. Here are a few tips for you to master it:

• Don’t use empty filler: In the risk of static the obvious, “here,” “click here,” “more,” “learn more,” “read more,” “this,” “link”… They all say nothing.
• Keep it short, but specific: “Descriptive” doesn’t mean long, it means meaningful.
• Name the destination or the action: A uselink link is either a noun for something you’ll get, or a verb for something you’ll do. For example:
  • Download invoice (PDF)
  • View pricing
  • Reset password
  • Read the documentation
  • Contact support
  • About us
• If it’s not a web page, say what it is: not an obligation, but it’s kind to mention to the user the format (PDF, ZIP, PNG…), size, and if it’s on an external site or service:
  • Download app update (ZIP, 30 MiB)
  • Invoice (PDF)
  • Press kit (ZIP)

Examples

A few bad and good examples for you to understand:

Who else is doing it better

Despite everything I said, you don’t have to take my word for it.

If you won’t believe someone who has watched the “here link” plague spread for decades, there are plenty of better authorities who’ve been complaining about it just as long and wrote suggestions for better links.

• Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, in 1992, wrote Make your (hyper)text readable:

  This style is really awkward; when you click on ‘here’, you have to look around to make sure it is the right here. Let me urge you, when you construct your HTML page, to make sure that the thing-you-click is actually some kind of title for what it is when you click there.

• In 1998, German software engineer and Internet standards contributor Jutta Degener also wrote about Writing hypertext copy along with a list of empty meaningless Dangerous Words:

  Some of your readers will not be able to click; use “select this” instead of “click here”, if you must. (Better, avoid talking about the document in the first place; write about the subject instead.)

• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), in HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 dated 6 November 2000, gave tips on better link copy to help the new guidelines for better accessibility, now used by many organisations and government agencies around the world:

  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”.

• The W3C wrote about link text again in Don’t use “click here” as link text in 2010:

  What a link means

  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

  (However, this is one page where I disagree about their discouragement of using verb phrases, which I still think is appropriate in case of links for performing actions.)

• Today’s WCAG 2.2 by the W3C also makes it clear in Success Criterion (SC) 2.4.4:

  The purpose of each link can be determined from the link text alone or from the link text together with its programmatically determined link context, except where the purpose of the link would be ambiguous to users in general.

• Well-known UX research and consulting firm, the Nielsen Norman Group, also detailed bad and good link text in Writing Hyperlinks: Salient, Descriptive, Start with Keyword later in 2014:

  Even when the links visually stand out, they need to be meaningful to be helpful. In order for these “here” links to make sense, users have to read the surrounding text to put the link into context. […] Poor link labels hurt your search-engine ranking. Search engines use the anchor text as an additional cue to what the page or document is about.

• The US Government is legally bound to certain accessibility requirements for electronic and information technology in Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (added later via admendments). They wrote about link text as well in Accessibility Bytes No. 4: Descriptive Links and Hypertext (last updated in August 2024):

  While screen readers can read a full page to a user, screen reader users may prefer instead to listen to a list of links. In that case, a screen reader may only read the link text and not the surrounding text.

• The European Union also a standard for accessibility requirements, EN 301 549, which includes WCAG 2.1 in full, thus requiring descriptive link text.

• The Canadian government also encourages descriptive link text as written in Guidelines for creating accessible documents, also from 2024, a part of Accessibility Standards Canada:

  Ensure your hyperlink text is descriptive.

  • Links must describe the content a person will find once they click on it (for example, “Sign up for our newsletter”).
  • Avoid generic wording like “Click here” or “Read more.”
  • Avoid using the URL as the link text (unless it is in a printed document).

  While the Treasury Board of Canada is reviewing the Canadian government’s Standard of Web Accessibility, they also recommend following EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1.

• Despite still clinging on fax machines and floppy disks, believe it or not, even the Japanese government published a Web Accessibility Introduction Guidebook recently in October 2025. The PDF manual in Japanese also encourages good link copy and refers to the WCAG.

You see, if you write better link text, you’re in good company.

The fix is simple

Link text is part of the interface, and the interface is part of the writing.

So, please, stop linking “here.” Write the destination like you mean it.

Your users will find what they need faster. Screen reader users won’t get lists full of nonsense. Search engines will understand your site better. And you’ll look like someone who cares about the craft.