Skip to main content

Arguments for opening links in a new tab or window

By Jason Grigsby

Published on March 14th, 2024

Topics

Update: Please see my follow up article that clarifies what information I’m looking for.

A couple of months ago, Lynne d Johnson asked how content creators, marketers, and editors handle outbound links. The results of her LinkedIn poll and the comments on it surprised me.

A screenshot of Lynne’s LinkedIn poll asking the question, “What are your best practices for links on your site?” The results were 59% said open in a new tab; 26% said open in the same tab; and 15% said open in a new window. There were 27 total votes.

My stance in the poll’s comments reflects advice I’ve long given to clients:

  • New tabs disrupt the functionality of the back button, a critical browser feature.
  • It complicates browsing on mobile by disabling the swipe-to-go-back gesture.
  • It creates a bad experience for those utilizing assistive technologies.
  • People should have control over when they want to open new tabs and when they don’t.

Despite the advice and a myriad of articles backing up these points, many still favor new tabs. So, this begs the question: Why?

Rationales I’ve encountered include:

  • Ensuring users can easily return to the original site.
  • Increasing time spent on the original site.
  • Clearly differentiating between the original content and external resources.

Are there other arguments that I’m missing?

And more importantly, does anyone have data that supports the arguments for opening links in new tabs or windows?

I don’t remember the first time I was asked to open links in a new window, but I know it was early in my career. After nearly two decades of debating this practice, you’d expect to find a few case studies or academic papers supporting the approach. But I’ve searched extensively and I can’t even find any anecdotes that support this practice.

What am I missing? A significant percentage of web professionals believe that opening outbound links in new tabs or windows provides a benefit to site owners. Why? Is it a digital urban legend? Or are people sitting on internal data showing big benefits to this approach?

These are honest questions. I know the arguments against this approach, but what are the arguments and the data for it? If there are benefits that have been measured, I’d love to know about them.

Jason Grigsby is one of the co-founders of Cloud Four, Mobile Portland and Responsive Field Day. He is the author of Progressive Web Apps from A Book Apart. Follow him at @grigs.

Comments

Amy Anuszewski said:

For me, I usually want to open an external link in a new tab – especially if it’s in the middle of the page I’m reading. I often want to glance at the in-line link to understand the context. As a web author, I want external links to open in a new tab so my readers don’t get lost.

Ben LaCroix said:

Recently read the css-tricks article on this, which has plenty of good depth/discussion: https://css-tricks.com/use-target_blank/

Anecdotally, one case where I think it makes a lot of sense is if your site has a music/audio player. Following an external link shouldn’t stop the music!

Permalink to Ben LaCroix’s comment

Replies to Ben LaCroix

Jason Grigsby (Article Author ) replied:

I get that, but to be honest, I’m not particularly interested in exceptions that are based on UX. There are places like where it makes sense in the context like the ones Chris and you mention.

But that’s not why people who responded to the poll I shared in the article said they open outbound links in a new tab. They believe there is some benefit to their site for this practice. That’s what I want to understand.

And I want to understand it because I suspect there is no data—not even anecdotally—to support it.

Put a different way, nearly 20 years of this practice and no one has A/B tested it and published the results?

Koos Looijesteijn said:

I like that you’re opening this up, because this discussion often is dumbed down to that opening links in new tabs is something marketeers want so you return to the original site and that users don’t want it, unless they explicitly request a link to open in a new tab.

I think there are a few UX reasons why links to other websites should open in a new tab:

1) Many users now assume this behavior is applied. When a page on another website is loaded after a link is clicked, users may close the tab to return to the origin. When the original tab doesn’t appear, that’s bad UX.
2) This is a weird one, but still: the icon commonly used for external links is the same for opening links in a new tab: the one that’s in the image at the top of this post. I think there are valid UX reasons to mark external links as such: users may only be interested in the current site. They may just want to browse a specific site, because they like it for its author, type of content, or style. This is especially true for children on computers that are locked down to only allow specific websites. Because the aforementioned icon is also used for opening links in a new tab, by using this icon for external links, you also suggest that these links will open in a new tab. As far as I know, there are no commonly used icons that either mean ‘external link’ or ‘open a new tab’.

Rebecca Romppel said:

The only reason that I can think of where opening links in new tabs or windows make sense is when you are in the process of filling out a lengthy form and have a link to a help page.
Or if you are somewhat securely logged in (online-banking) and need to view additional infos (stock data?) on another webpage.
Any situation where it is perhaps essential to put the old page you are on and the new page next to another to compare things.

Permalink to Rebecca Romppel’s comment

Replies to Rebecca Romppel

Locketopus replied:

All of those and many more. Essentially, if you’re in a web app and you don’t want to lose state (or even take the risk of losing state).

The days when you could count on web pages being static resources that could be navigated forward and backward at will are long gone.

It could certainly be argued that this is bad, but we need to use the web we have, not the one we wish we had.

Nils Mielke said:

One reason missing from the pro new tab/window list is clients (and hereby I mean the people having contracted us for doing their website) are used to that behaviour and thus expect it to be the same on their site.

Wurzel said:

I find this discussion very irritating. From the first time i recognized on a website that a link could open in a new tab (20 y ago or so), i thought „yeah THAT‘s the solution, finally!“ This should be the default for any link! For me it is totally annoying when links open in the same tab. IRL i also do leave the book i‘m reading open when looking after a term in a dictionary. In so many cases the browser‘s back button does NOT take you to the same site view as clicking on an existing tab does. (But to make it clear, i‘m talking about tabs, not! windows.)

Fiona McLellan said:

Thank you for this. A request to add target=”_blank” to some links recently came through from our Marketing department, and I declined it on accessibility grounds.

A few years ago when starting out in web work, a manager asked me to add target=”_blank” to various pages I was working on, and I did it. In my case and in the case of the manager, we both have a strong preference for links opening in new tabs. This is probably to do with the way we read web content – typically focusing on one resource at a time, but opening up relevant links to check up on later. In this situation, retaining a view of the original page is important.

Also, the tabs become a convenient way to keep track of what pages have been read. One essay might lead to ten tabs being opened. I can then go through each tab, save it to my bookmarks if I think I might want it again, and then close it.

Of course, these days I right click on links to get to the ‘new tab’ option.

I would be interesting in learning more about the experiences of disabled web users with target=”_blank”. As you’ve pointed out, a majority of web professionals tend to favour it. Although WCAG2.2summarises the issues, being able to point of personal testimony of its disadvantages can be more persuasive than citing best practice guidance.

Christine said:

Another case for opening links as new tabs is any website where the content auto-refreshes so if you hit the back button, it will also auto-refresh and you’ll lose your place in the feed or where on the page you’d scrolled to, that’s a number one pet peeve of mine.

Daniel said:

For instance in ecommerce the cart function is most important. For instance viewing a product detail from a new tab as its drawbacks. The major drawback is that sessions are not shared between tabs by default. So when a user adds the product to cart from a new tab, the product won’t appear in the cart. So from a developer point of view making the session cart accessible between different tabs is an added development overhead.