Empty or blank headings: Crawl Audit check 60

Short answer: an empty heading is a heading tag with nothing readable inside, such as <h2></h2> or one holding only spaces. Screen readers may still list it as a heading, with nothing in it. Check 60 warns when it finds any. The fix is to fill the heading or remove the tag.

What Crawl Audit checks

• For every H1 to H6, Crawl Audit takes the text inside it, including text in child elements, and trims the spaces.
• Pass: every heading has some text.
• Warning: one or more have none, with the count.

A heading that holds only an image counts as empty here, even if the image has alt text. If that's what you have, the warning is worth a look rather than a rewrite.

What the guidance says

• WCAG success criterion 2.4.6: "Headings and labels describe topic or purpose." A heading with no text describes nothing.
• The same document says a heading can be short: "A word, or even a single character, may suffice if it provides an appropriate cue".
• MDN, on content in HTML: elements that hold text "should have at least one node in its contents that is palpable content", which it defines as "content that is neither empty nor hidden".

We found no Google statement on empty headings. This one is about the people using your page.

Where empty headings come from

• Page builder blocks left with a heading field blank.
• Headings used for spacing, with the text deleted and the tag left behind.
• Templates that print a heading for an optional field, such as a subtitle, even when the field is empty.

How to fix it

• Delete the empty block, or give it the text it was meant to have.
• Use margin or padding for spacing, not empty tags.
• In templates, only output the heading when its field has a value.

Sources

• W3C, Understanding success criterion 2.4.6: Headings and labels (updated 9 March 2026), checked 3 October 2026.
• MDN, Content categories, checked 3 October 2026.