Empty link text: what it means and how to fix it

What we look for

These pages link to other pages on the site with no visible anchor text (the clickable words of a link), for example a link wrapped around an icon.

Why it matters

The clickable words tell visitors and search engines what the linked page is about. Without them, screen readers may read out the bare address instead.

How to fix

Add short, descriptive text to each of these links in the page template, or an aria-label (a hidden text label) to icon links. For image links, give the image alt text (a short written description of the image).

What it cannot know

Raptor counts only visible text, so a link around an image with alt text still counts as empty here, although search engines can read that alt text.

Where you’ll see it

The id is stable, and every surface uses it, so it’s the thing to search for or hand to an agent.

Terminal: When it is one of the five findings under Fix first, raptor crawl prints the id under it.
Check: links.no_anchor_text
crawl.json and the CSV: The crawl JSON names the finding by this id, and so do the CSV and raptor_query.
"check_id": "links.no_anchor_text"
The HTML report: This link opens the finding in the report, and each finding shows its id.
crawl.html#finding=links.no_anchor_text
MCP: raptor_findings with this check_id returns the finding in full, with a fix brief ready to paste into a task. If it didn’t fire, it says why.
raptor_findings { "job_id": "...", "check_id": "links.no_anchor_text" }