Menu links that lead nowhere

A placeholder target — a hash, a hash followed by nothing, or an empty attribute — left where a real destination was meant to go.

A target pointing at a page that was removed or moved, which is a broken link in the most visible position on the site.

A dropdown parent whose own target is a placeholder because it exists only to open a submenu, which breaks for anyone who cannot hover.

An entry rendered conditionally that renders as an empty element when its condition fails.

An icon-only entry with no text and no accessible name, which is announced as a link with no destination described.

The navigation appears on every page, so a single defect is present on the whole site.

It is the first thing a visitor uses when they do not find what they came for, which is the moment a failure costs most.

Crawlers follow it to discover the site's structure, so an entry that leads nowhere removes a discovery path for everything beneath it.

And it is the element users trust most: an entry that does nothing reads as the site being broken rather than as one link being wrong.

A parent entry that only opens a submenu is frequently given a placeholder target so it looks like a link.

On a mouse it works, because hovering opens the submenu and the target is never followed.

On a keyboard or a touch device, activating it navigates to the placeholder — which does nothing or jumps to the top of the page.

The correct markup is a button with an expanded state when the parent only opens a submenu, and a real link when it also has a destination.

Which is the same distinction as anywhere else: a control that acts is a button, a control that navigates is a link.

Give every entry a real destination, or make it a button if it does not navigate.

Give every entry an accessible name — visible text, or a label where the entry is an icon.

Label the navigation landmark itself, so assistive technology offers it as a named region rather than an unnamed list.

Remove entries whose destination no longer exists rather than pointing them at the home page, which tells a visitor nothing.

Fix it in the component rather than per page, since that is almost always where it lives.

A collapsed menu whose toggle has no accessible name, which is the most common mobile navigation defect.

A toggle implemented on a non-interactive element, which a keyboard cannot reach at all.

Entries that exist in the desktop menu and are dropped from the mobile one, which makes part of the site unreachable on a phone.

A submenu that cannot be opened without hovering, which no touch device can do.

Each of those is the same class of defect appearing at a different viewport, which is why the navigation is worth checking at both.

View source and read every target in the navigation — a hash alone or an empty attribute is the finding.

Tab through the menu and activate each entry with the keyboard, which finds the dropdown parents immediately.

Check the menu at a phone viewport, where the markup is frequently different.

Run a link check restricted to the navigation, which is a small list and the highest-value one on the site.

Listen to the menu with a screen reader, which is where unnamed icon entries become obvious.

`structure.menu` analyses the primary navigation region: its links, its ARIA attributes, its sub-menus and its dead entries.

`structure.navigation` compares navigation across the crawled pages and checks the key pages are linked from it.

`availability.broken_links` reports targets that answer with an error, which covers the entries pointing at removed pages.

`mobile.menu` and `mobile.navigation` examine the same region at a phone viewport.

`accessibility.interactive_elements` reports elements made interactive without the semantics that make them reachable, which is the dropdown parent case.