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target=_blank and noopener: Crawl Audit check 66

Crawl Audit check 66 flags new-tab links to other sites without rel=noopener. Why modern browsers already protect you, and why it's still worth adding.

Zain Kazmi2 min read
On this page
  1. What Crawl Audit checks
  2. What the standards say
  3. On devmarde.com
  4. How to fix it
  5. Sources
Check
66 of 200
Module
Technical SEO & Indexability
Group
Link Hygiene & Internationalization
Impact
Low

Short answer: a link with target="_blank" opens in a new tab. In older browsers, the new page could use that link to send your original tab somewhere else. Adding rel="noopener" blocks that. Current browsers now treat every target="_blank" link as if it had noopener, so this is a low-risk check. Check 66 warns when an external new-tab link has neither noopener nor noreferrer, because adding it costs nothing and still covers older browsers.

What Crawl Audit checks

  • Crawl Audit looks at links to other websites (an href starting with http that isn't your domain) with target="_blank".
  • Pass: every one has noopener or noreferrer in its rel.
  • Warning: one or more don't, with the count.

What the standards say

  • MDN, on the <a> element: "Setting target="_blank" on <a> elements implicitly provides the same rel behavior as setting rel="noopener" which does not set window.opener."
  • That behaviour was added to the HTML standard in 2019, and browsers followed.
  • noreferrer goes further: it also stops the other site seeing which page the visitor came from. That's a privacy choice, not a requirement, and it hides your site from the other site's referral reports.

Nothing here affects search ranking. It's about the safety of your visitors' tabs.

On devmarde.com

On 3 October our homepage had 13 links to other websites. Twelve open in a new tab, and all twelve have noopener or noreferrer.

How to fix it

<a href="https://example.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Example</a>
  • WordPress, Shopify, Wix and Squarespace: the links to check first are in custom HTML blocks, older posts and theme code.
  • Next.js and React: add rel="noopener" wherever you set target="_blank". The jsx-no-target-blank rule in eslint-plugin-react flags missing ones.

A simpler option: don't open external links in a new tab at all. The visitor can choose to.

Sources

All 200 Crawl Audit checks

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