Use the First 11 Characters of a Link

Jakob Neilsen just came out with a study on bad link text and good link text.

What is a good link text?

* Use plain language
* Use specific terminology
* Follow conventions for naming common features
* Front-load user- and action-oriented terms

What is a bad link text?

* Bland, generic words
* Made-up words or terms
* Starting with blah-blah and deferring the information-carrying text to the end.

Basically, they took major sites links, shortened them to the first 11 characters (as people presumably read less after that), and tested if the person could detect what the link was about.

Check out his report. It’s interesting reading in creating links and menus.