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DEV-URL-01Must1 of 11 in URL

Make every navigational link an <a> element whose href holds a real URL

Level
Must

Required: the site is not ready to launch without it.

Documentation

Documented

At least one cited Google document states or supports it.

Area
URLURLs, links and discovery
Covered

Automatic

Decided automatically once Regensbot renders your pages.

Why it matters

Google extracts links from a elements with an href holding an absolute or relative URL, once from the server HTML and again from the rendered page, and uses them to discover pages, understand the site's structure and rank. Googlebot does not click, so a link that only works through JavaScript leaves its target without a link Google can reliably extract.

How to meet it

Audit every component that outputs links: main and sub-navigation, breadcrumbs, pagination, filters, product tiles, footers and language selectors. Each needs <a href="/real/path">, and framework link components must render that href. Client-side routing may intercept the click as long as the href stays (DEV-URL-03). Do not rely on plain-text URLs or on sitemaps alone for discovery.

How to test it

In URL Inspection (rendered HTML) and in a crawler with JavaScript off and on, every navigation item appears as <a href="...">; a crawl from the homepage reaches all key templates through links; search the rendered HTML for onclick=, javascript:, routerLink and href="#".

How Regensbot covers it

AutomaticNeedsRendering in headless Chromium

Decided automatically once Regensbot renders your pages.

Headless Chromium renders the page on an isolated render service, and the raw and the rendered HTML run through the same parsers.

How verdicts workWhat you connect

Sources

Google documents02

  1. 01Link best practices for GoogleGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
  2. 02Understand the JavaScript SEO basicsGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)

Claims in the knowledge base06

  1. D2-C039ConfirmedHow is HTML interpretedShown on screen
  2. D2-C043SourceHow is HTML interpretedGoogle's documentation
  3. D2-C038ConsistentHow is HTML interpretedSaid on stage
  4. D2-C169SourceLightning session D: Rendering and JavaScriptGoogle's documentation
  5. D2-C287ConfirmedWhat is Google friendly JavaScriptSaid on stage
  6. D2-C036ConfirmedHow is HTML interpretedShown on screen

Claim IDs refer to the Search Central Live 2026 knowledge base. The knowledge base (opens in a new tab)

Confirmed
Google's documentation states the same thing.
Consistent
Google's documentation supports it without stating it.
Source
The claim is the cited document itself.

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