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Toby A Inkster <> wrote in
news:

> Andreas Prilop wrote:
>
>> Paul Furman <> wrote:
>>
>>> <a href="thispage.htm" alt="this page">click here</a>
>>
>> "Click here" is bullshit anyway.
>> <http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/noClickHere>
>>
>> So write <a href="thispage.html">this page</a>
>
> I think "this page" is almost as bad as "click here".

And for the same reason: it says nothing about what makes that link
different from any other link on the page. Visual users skim for links
almost unconsciously; text-to-speech users can hear a list of links read or
tab between; users of modern browsers can get a sidebar or a popup showing
all the links coming off a page. If all the link texts say more or less
the same thing, the user is forced to read, rather than scan, the content
in order to find out where he wants to go next, slowing him down and
increasing the "cognitive load."

Link texts need to really stand out, which means not only that they should
be unique within a page, but they should be short and simple without any
"padding." For example, words like "available" should not appear in link
text because including them doesn't add any meaning; if a resource wasn't
available, you wouldn't be linking to it, now would you? Similarly,
"download" shouldn't appear in link text unless it's the only download link
on the page. "Here" should be completely avoided; the user already knows
that the resource is where it is rather than someplace else.

Eric Bohlman wrote:

> Toby A Inkster <> wrote in
> news:
>
>> I think "this page" is almost as bad as "click here".
>
> And for the same reason: it says nothing about what makes that link
> different from any other link on the page.

Well, "click here" is bad for two reasons. "This page" is only bad for the
first of them.

1. "click here" does not describe what's on the other end of the link.

2. "click here" is not device-independent. It assumes the use of a mouse
or similar pointing device.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me - http://www.goddamn.co.uk/tobyink/?page=132

Toby A Inkster <> wrote:

> Well, "click here" is bad for two reasons. "This page" is only bad
> for the first of them.
>
> 1. "click here" does not describe what's on the other end of the
> link.

You can put it that way, but it really includes a large set of reasons,
see http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/click.html

> 2. "click here" is not device-independent. It assumes the use of a
> mouse or similar pointing device.

That's true.

But "This page" is bad for yet another reason: the pronoun "this"
normally refers to _this_, i.e. something that is immediately at hand,
such as the page on which the phrase "this page" occurs.

If you think that nobody could ever misunderstand it that way, you can
look forward to learning new features of the human mind. There is
absolutely nothing that cannot be misunderstood, and all communication
inevitably fails - though sometimes just partially, and by using
reasonable link texts we make the accidental successes more probable.

Since this originally resulted from the text of a dummy link, I think
the morale is: Be clever when writing dummy texts. Dummies can be
smart. And every time your write an example, you give an example.
So make it a good example.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[JohnNotion]

Sounds like things may have changed since this posting in 2004. Check out paragraph 3 of the following link. Looks like it's beneficial for your Google listing to include the 'alt' attribute in an anchor tag.

http://support.google.com/webmasters...n&answer=47334