Lighthouse warns when an anchor tag is just a placeholder about lighthouse HOT 6 OPEN

relevant spec

If the a element has an href attribute, then it represents a hyperlink (a hypertext anchor) labeled by its contents.

If the a element has no href attribute, then the element represents a placeholder for where a link might otherwise have been placed, if it had been relevant, consisting of just the element's contents.

The target, download, ping, rel, hreflang, type, and referrerpolicy attributes must be omitted if the href attribute is not present.

If the itemprop attribute is specified on an a element, then the href attribute must also be specified.

Agreed we should not flag <a> as an uncrawlable link based on the spec.

We should still call it out if it has any of these must-not-be-present attributes when href is missing.

Thanks for bringing this to us!

from lighthouse.

I expect Lighthouse to embrace the relevant specifications and to not give any warnings here.

Yeah I think we can discuss changing this. Although the link is not crawlable this doesn't appear to be a bad practice that search documentation warns against.

I also expect Lighthouse to have consistent behavior between anchor tags without href when they contain text vs. when they contain images.

Not sure what you are referring to here, what differences did you noticed between anchor tags containing images vs text?

from lighthouse.

<a>
	Hello
</a>

The audit fails for me here as well. Not noticing any difference between images/text.

from lighthouse.

You are right!

I was testing with an anchor element that also had an id attribute.
My assumption that it had to do with image/text content was incorrect.

from lighthouse.

I also expect Lighthouse to have consistent behavior between anchor tags without href when they contain text vs. when they contain images.

Not sure what you are referring to here, what differences did you noticed between anchor tags containing images vs text?

This triggers a warning:

<a>
	<img src="https://picsum.photos/200/300" alt="" width="200" height="300" loading="lazy">
</a>

This does not:

<a>
	Hello
</a>

from lighthouse.

Thank you for updating the title.
I've also crossed out the incorrect statement in the initial report and updated the html content of the example page

This better reflects the issue.

from lighthouse.