Click here

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"Click here" is a verb phrase that may be used as the anchor text of a hyperlink on a web page. The World Wide Web Consortium, through its Quality Tips for Webmasters, advises web designers to avoid using "click here" for this purpose. ^[1] As of February 21, 2008, for the top four search engines, Google returns 2.37 billion^[2], Yahoo returns 3.54 billion^[3], Live search returns 1.21 billion^[4] and Ask.com returns 393.5 million ^[5] search results for the phrase.

Jakob Nielsen, a leading web usability pundit, says, "Don't use 'click here' or other non-descriptive link text." ^[6] According to web programmer Jutta Denenger, "If you owned a shop, you'd write 'Welcome' on the door, not 'Open this door to enter the shop.'"^[7]

1 Search indexing
2 Accessibility and device dependence
3 Foreign languages
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Search indexing

Search engines use anchor text to index the content of a linked-to site. For example, a site which is linked with the anchor text "Miserable failure" by many other sites may appear towards the top of searches for "miserable failure".^[8] Some bloggers have speculated that using "click here" in lieu of a descriptive name is poor search engine optimization practice. ^[9]^[10]

[edit] Accessibility and device dependence

Screen readers, used by the visually impaired, can read out only the hyperlinks on the page as a quick method of navigation. Usability and accessibility firm Webcredible advises to avoid non-descriptive link text such as "click here" at all costs, as it makes no sense whatsoever out of context. ^[11]

In addition, mobile phones and other devices without a mouse similarly have no clicking when a link is selected with the keypad. With increasing numbers of touchscreen devices, a related phrase now emerging is "tap here".^{[citation needed]}

Users may want to print web pages for reference. "Click here" is inapplicable on the printed page. For this reason, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, advises web designers to try to avoid references in the text to online aspects. ^[12]

[edit] Foreign languages

Many languages have similar phrases. For example, the Spanish version is haz clic aquí, German: klicken Sie hier, French: cliquez ici, Danish: klik her, Polish: kliknij tutaj, Hungarian: kattintson ide, Bulgarian: щракни тук (shtrakni tuk), Japanese: ここをクリック (koko o kurikku), Hebrew version is לחץ כאן (lechats kan), Swedish: klicka här.