2.060.000.000 result from Google. That’s a lot.
All those results are pages about “click here, do this, do that”. Why do people still use that on a website?
“Click here” is one of those text fragments that seem to stick around. Webdesigners and usability experts recommend not using it and still, everyone does, including Adobe. Adobe Acrobat reader is the first item on Google SERPs for “click here”. Simply because it is used in plenty of links on a huge number of sites.
All I can see is that people are using it, and that there is no tendency that tells me it is dying.
So why not? Why do people still use it? Dismissing it as stupidity or lack of knowledge is too easy. There must be some reason why people still use it even though there are plenty of reasons not to.
Content-editors still use it because it’s clear. It is clear what a visitor must do. Not what the visitors will get after the click. But that really doesn’t matter because through all the noise (the internet) this person found your website, scanned it thoroughly, found what he was looking for, and followed the instruction. What’s behind the link, who knows? Does anyone care?
The text fragment works more or less like an embedded command: “When you click this link, you will know more about the subject than others do.” The link becomes more attractive: it states what you should do.
People scan for underlined blue text. The link text “click here” enforces the concept of the link and the click becomes a jump into the unknown.
To click is to believe.
I have trained around 200 editors and I repeated it a thousand times:
- that the text of the link should be an indication of the subject of the referring page,
- that it is is not good for usability/accessibility and SEO,
- that it is uninformative
“Click here” as link text is not going away in the near future even though it is disregarded as bad practice by practitioners of IA, usability and SEO. The concept is too easy to understand. It almost feels natural.
Links should be informative about where you’ll take the visitor, but it seems that using verbs as links is very powerful.
Tell them what to do
And then you get this facebook button: “like”. It’s the same thing, just better. Emotional. The link instructs. Like or die clicking!
The facebook like button instructs you to like – read click – the button. It doesn’t say “I like”, it doesn’t say “click here to like”, it’s just “like”.
Implicitly I translate it to “I like”, as must people do (disagree with me ?). But it is nothing more or less than an embedded command: like.
The simplicity of the concept “telling people what to do” is definitely the main reason why the “click here” link is not fading away. Even though the text fragment is pretty powerful, the reasons not to use it still prevail. Click here to comment.