Why External Links Should Open in a New Tab

Opening external links in a new tab is one of the most common link-handling conventions on the web.

The reasoning seems straightforward: a visitor clicks a link to another website, the external resource opens separately, and the original website remains available in the previous tab.

In HTML, this behavior is normally created with:

<a href="https://example.com/" target="_blank">External resource</a>

For articles, documentation, product comparisons and research-heavy content, this can be useful because visitors may want to inspect an external source without abandoning the page they were reading.

But there is an important qualification: external links do not automatically need to open in a new tab.

Opening a new browsing context is a user-experience decision, not an HTML requirement and not an SEO requirement. In some situations it improves continuity. In others it interrupts normal browser navigation and can create accessibility problems.

The better principle is therefore not “every external link must open in a new tab.” It is:

Use a new tab when preserving the current page provides a clear benefit to the visitor, and make that behavior predictable.

This guide explains how target="_blank" works, why new tabs can be useful for external resources, when they should be avoided, how noopener, noreferrer and nofollow differ, what WordPress provides in the editor and how to build a consistent external-link policy.

What target=”_blank” actually does

A normal HTML link does not need a target attribute:

<a href="https://example.com/">Example</a>

By default, following that link loads the destination in the current browsing context.

The HTML target attribute changes where the destination is displayed.

The MDN documentation for the HTML anchor element documents several target values, including:

• _self, which uses the current browsing context and is the default behavior;
• _blank, which normally opens a new tab or window;
• _parent, which targets the parent browsing context;
• _top, which targets the top-level browsing context.

For ordinary website links, the important comparison is usually between _self and _blank.

This:

<a href="https://example.com/" target="_blank">Example</a>

requests that the external resource be opened in a new browsing context. Browsers commonly implement that as a new tab, although the exact presentation can depend on browser and user settings.

That distinction matters. target="_blank" technically requests a new browsing context; it does not guarantee a specific visual tab implementation on every possible user agent.

Why opening an external link in a new tab can be useful

The strongest argument for opening certain external links separately is context preservation.

Imagine someone is reading a detailed WordPress tutorial and encounters a reference to official developer documentation.

If the reference opens in the current tab, the reader leaves the tutorial. They can use the browser’s Back button to return, but they have temporarily replaced the page they were using as their primary context.

If the reference opens separately, the reader can inspect the documentation while leaving the original guide available.

This creates what the MDN guide to creating links describes as a parallel navigation experience: both documents remain available at the same time.

Research and documentation are strong use cases

New tabs can be particularly useful when external links act as supporting material rather than the next step in the site’s navigation.

Examples include:

• official documentation;
• technical specifications;
• research papers;
• statistics and data sources;
• legal or regulatory references;
• third-party product documentation;
• citations;
• external tools used alongside a tutorial.

A reader may want to move repeatedly between the original article and those references.

That is very different from an ordinary navigation flow where the linked page is simply the next destination.

Long-form content can benefit from preserving reading position

Consider a twenty-minute WordPress guide containing several external references.

A visitor may be halfway through the article when they click a documentation link.

Keeping the guide available in its original tab can make it easier to return to the exact reading context after checking the source.

This is one reason technical documentation and research-oriented websites sometimes treat external references differently from internal navigation.

External sources are also valuable for credibility when used correctly. Linking to authoritative documentation is not something that should be avoided simply because the destination belongs to another domain.

For SEO-related external-link attributes specifically, see noopener, noreferrer and nofollow, explained.

Why external links should not always open in a new tab

The advantages of parallel navigation do not make target="_blank" universally preferable.

Normal browser navigation has an important property: the user controls it.

If a normal link opens in the current tab, users can still choose to open it differently through:

• Ctrl-click or Command-click;
• middle-click;
• the browser context menu;
• touch gestures supported by the device;
• browser accessibility features.

When the website forces target="_blank", it makes that decision on the user’s behalf.

The WordPress documentation style guide for external links explicitly recommends not forcing links into a new tab or window by default and instead allowing readers to decide how to open them.

MDN makes a similar point: whether a link should open separately should be a conscious user-experience decision rather than an automatic rule.

The Back button no longer behaves as expected

Many users understand web navigation through a simple pattern:

Page A → Page B → Back → Page A

Opening Page B in another tab changes that model.

The original tab never navigated away from Page A, so pressing Back in the newly created tab does not return to the original article.

Experienced users understand tabs easily. Not every visitor necessarily does.

Too many new tabs create clutter

An article containing fifteen external links can produce fifteen additional tabs if every link is opened and every one forces _blank.

That is not automatically a better experience.

New tabs are most defensible when there is a meaningful reason to preserve the current context, not simply because a URL belongs to another hostname.

Accessibility is the strongest reason not to force new tabs blindly

Opening a new browsing context can be disorienting for some users.

The MDN HTML accessibility guidance notes that users with low vision, users navigating with screen readers and users with some cognitive difficulties may become confused when a new tab, window or application opens unexpectedly.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative likewise discusses new windows and tabs as changes of context that need careful handling.

The practical lesson is simple:

If your website intentionally opens a link in another tab, that behavior should not surprise the visitor.

Indicate that a link opens separately

One approach is visible text:

<a
    href="https://example.com/"
    target="_blank"
    rel="noopener"
>
    Example documentation (opens in a new tab)
</a>

This is explicit, but repeating “opens in a new tab” after dozens of links can make an article visually noisy.

Another approach is an external-link icon combined with accessible text.

For example:

<a
    href="https://example.com/"
    target="_blank"
    rel="noopener"
>
    Example documentation
    <span class="screen-reader-text">
        (opens in a new tab)
    </span>
</a>

The visible interface can use an appropriate external-link indicator while assistive technology receives additional context.

If an icon itself conveys the behavior, it also needs an accessible implementation rather than relying exclusively on a decorative image that some users cannot perceive.

Do not open new tabs without a reason

Accessibility guidance does not mean target="_blank" is forbidden.

It means opening another browsing context has consequences.

Use it when the benefit outweighs those consequences and communicate the behavior appropriately.

Internal and external links serve different navigation roles

A useful website normally contains both internal and external links.

Internal links connect resources within the same website and form part of its information architecture.

Examples include:

• navigation menus;
• category links;
• related articles;
• breadcrumbs;
• contextual links to another guide;
• links to product or feature pages.

These links usually work naturally in the current tab because the visitor is continuing through the same website.

External links often have a different role. They may send visitors to:

• documentation;
• sources;
• third-party services;
• partner websites;
• social networks;
• external applications.

That distinction can justify a different policy, but domain boundaries alone should not dictate browser behavior.

Internal links normally belong in the current tab

Imagine an article linking to another guide on the same website.

Opening every internal reference in another tab would quickly produce a fragmented browsing experience.

Internal links should therefore normally behave like conventional site navigation unless there is a specific reason to do otherwise.

This distinction also matters when automating link behavior in WordPress. A system that modifies external links must reliably determine whether a URL actually points outside the current site.

Internal linking also has separate SEO and architectural implications. For example, WordPress Canonical URLs, Explained covers why internal links, canonical URLs and sitemap destinations should remain consistent.

target=”_blank”, noopener and browser security

Discussions about new-tab links frequently mention rel="noopener".

Historically, a page opened through target="_blank" could have an opener relationship with the originating page through JavaScript’s window.opener.

noopener removes that relationship.

For example:

<a
    href="https://example.com/"
    target="_blank"
    rel="noopener"
>
    Example
</a>

The MDN documentation for rel=”noopener” explains that the keyword prevents the opened resource from receiving access to the originating document through Window.opener.

Modern target=”_blank” already implies noopener behavior

This is an area where older web-development advice is often repeated without qualification.

Under modern HTML behavior, an anchor using target="_blank" implicitly receives the relevant noopener protection.

The current MDN anchor documentation explicitly documents this behavior.

Therefore, it is no longer accurate to claim that every modern link containing:

target="_blank"

but lacking a literal:

rel="noopener"

is automatically exposed to the historical opener problem.

Explicitly adding noopener can still make intent clear and provide consistency with older environments and existing coding standards:

<a
    href="https://example.com/"
    target="_blank"
    rel="noopener"
>
    External resource
</a>

For the deeper distinction between opener protection, referrer privacy and search-engine relationship attributes, see noopener, noreferrer and nofollow, explained.

noopener, noreferrer and nofollow are not interchangeable

A common external-link pattern is:

rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"

Seeing these tokens repeatedly together makes it easy to assume that every external link needs all three.

It does not.

Each value solves a different problem.

Value	Primary purpose
noopener	Removes the opener relationship between browsing contexts
noreferrer	Suppresses referrer information and also provides opener isolation behavior
nofollow	Qualifies the relationship with the destination for search engines

noreferrer affects referral information

A normal navigation can provide the destination with referrer information according to the applicable referrer policy.

Using:

rel="noreferrer"

prevents the destination from receiving that referrer information for the navigation.

That may be useful for privacy-sensitive situations, but it also means the external website may no longer see your page as the referring source in its analytics.

Do not add noreferrer mechanically unless that behavior is actually desired.

External requests and third-party relationships have broader privacy implications beyond links alone. See WordPress Privacy and Third-Party Requests for the wider distinction between navigation, embedded resources and third-party network requests.

nofollow is an SEO relationship attribute

nofollow does not control whether a link opens in another tab.

These two links can both open in a new tab:

<a
    href="https://example.com/"
    target="_blank"
    rel="noopener"
>
    Normal editorial link
</a>

<a
    href="https://example.com/"
    target="_blank"
    rel="nofollow noopener"
>
    Qualified link
</a>

The difference is not the browsing context. It is the relationship annotation.

The Google Search Central guidance on qualifying outbound links explains when values such as nofollow, sponsored and ugc are appropriate.

Opening an external link in a new tab does not improve SEO by itself

There is no general SEO benefit created by adding:

target="_blank"

to an external link.

The target attribute describes where the browser should display the destination. It is not a search-engine ranking directive.

Likewise, an external link does not automatically require:

rel="nofollow"

simply because it leaves your website.

Normal editorial references to authoritative sources can remain ordinary links.

Do not confuse user retention with SEO

One argument sometimes made for opening external links separately is that keeping the original website open will improve SEO metrics.

That is not a sound reason to build the policy.

The relevant question is whether the behavior improves the visitor’s task.

If someone is reading a tutorial and needs to consult an external API reference alongside it, preserving both pages may be useful.

If someone deliberately clicks a partner website because they want to leave your site and continue there, forcing another tab may provide little benefit.

Design the navigation for users first rather than trying to manipulate superficial engagement statistics.

External links can support high-quality content

Links to authoritative primary sources can make technical content more useful by allowing readers to verify claims and explore the underlying documentation.

WordPress’s own documentation style guidance explicitly permits and encourages useful external references where they provide relevant additional information.

The important decisions are:

• whether the source is trustworthy;
• whether the link is relevant;
• whether the relationship needs an SEO qualification;
• whether opening another tab genuinely improves the experience.

Those are separate questions.

How to open external links in a new tab in WordPress

WordPress provides an editor control for opening individual links in another tab.

The official WordPress link control documentation describes an Open in new tab option in the link’s advanced settings.

When enabled, WordPress generates the appropriate target behavior for the link.

This is useful when only selected links need to open separately.

Individual control works well for editorial exceptions

Suppose most links should follow normal browser behavior, but certain documentation links should remain alongside the current article.

Editors can enable the option selectively rather than applying a global rule.

This gives authors control over the navigation behavior based on context.

Manual HTML works too

When editing HTML directly, the markup is straightforward:

<a
    href="https://developer.wordpress.org/"
    target="_blank"
    rel="noopener"
>
    WordPress Developer Resources
</a>

Do not use JavaScript to reproduce behavior that HTML already provides.

A real anchor with a valid href preserves normal link semantics and allows browsers and assistive technologies to understand that the element performs navigation.

The MDN accessibility documentation specifically recommends using anchors for navigation rather than creating pseudo-links with inappropriate elements and JavaScript click handlers.

Automatically handling external links in WordPress

On a large WordPress site, managing every external link individually can become inconsistent.

One author may enable new tabs. Another may not. Older content may use different rel attributes. Links generated by blocks, shortcodes or plugins may introduce still more variations.

A centralized external-link policy can therefore be useful.

Before modifying links automatically, however, the system must distinguish external URLs from internal ones correctly.

A simplistic test such as:

if ( strpos( $url, 'mysite.com' ) === false ) {
    // Treat as external.
}

is fragile.

URLs can contain:

• subdomains;
• different schemes;
• ports;
• relative paths;
• protocol-relative forms;
• fragments;
• query strings;
• hostnames containing similar text.

URL parsing is safer than substring guessing.

WordPress provides wp_parse_url() as a WordPress-compatible wrapper for parsing URL components.

Do not transform internal links accidentally

A global external-link rule should normally leave internal navigation untouched.

That includes:

• relative links;
• same-domain absolute links;
• same-page fragment links;
• internal guide links;
• navigation links;
• WordPress-generated URLs.

Internal links form part of the site’s normal navigation architecture. Forcing all of them into separate tabs would create a dramatically different browsing experience.

The distinction becomes especially important when a website changes domains or URL structures. How to Migrate WordPress URLs Safely covers why internal URL references should be updated coherently during migrations rather than treated as arbitrary strings.

Account for subdomains intentionally

Whether a subdomain should count as external depends on the site’s architecture.

For example:

www.example.com
docs.example.com
app.example.com

are different hostnames, but the website owner may consider them part of one product ecosystem.

Your external-link policy should define that intentionally instead of assuming every hostname difference represents an unrelated website.

How TheOneWP can standardize external-link behavior

TheOneWP includes an External Links feature for applying a consistent policy to external links across supported WordPress content.

This is useful when the desired behavior is site-wide rather than an editorial decision that authors should repeat manually for every link.

A centralized policy can help keep decisions such as new-tab behavior and link relationship attributes consistent across existing content.

The important architectural principle is still the same: external-link handling should be separate from internal navigation.

A site’s own pages, guides, archives and navigation should not suddenly inherit new-tab behavior merely because an automated rule is too broad.

Do not combine unrelated rel values without understanding them

If a site-wide external-link policy also modifies rel attributes, each option should have an explicit reason.

For example:

target="_blank"
rel="noopener"

concerns browsing-context behavior.

Adding:

noreferrer

changes referrer behavior.

Adding:

nofollow

changes the relationship signal communicated to search engines.

These should not be bundled together merely because they are often seen in the same HTML element.

noopener, noreferrer and nofollow, explained provides the detailed decision model for those attributes.

A practical external-link policy

For many WordPress websites, a reasonable policy is more nuanced than “all external links open in a new tab.”

Link type	Typical behavior
Internal navigation	Same tab
Internal contextual article link	Same tab
External documentation used alongside a tutorial	New tab can be useful
External citation or research source	New tab can be useful
External destination that represents the user’s next step	Same tab may be preferable
Third-party application needed alongside the current page	New tab can be useful
Paid or sponsored link	Tab behavior is independent; use the appropriate relationship qualification

Ask whether parallel navigation helps

The most useful question is:

Does the visitor benefit from having the original page and the external resource available simultaneously?

If the answer is yes, a new tab may make sense.

If the external destination simply represents the next page in the user’s journey, same-tab navigation may be more natural.

Make the behavior consistent

Inconsistency creates its own usability problem.

If some documentation links open separately and visually identical links do not, users cannot predict what clicking them will do.

Establish a policy based on link purpose and apply it consistently.

Give users enough information

If opening a new tab is an important part of the interaction, communicate that change of context.

This can be accomplished with:

• visible explanatory text;
• an external-link icon with an accessible label;
• screen-reader text;
• a consistent site-wide visual convention.

The objective is not to decorate every external URL. It is to prevent unexpected navigation behavior.

Common mistakes with external links and new tabs

Forcing every external link into a new tab

This treats domain boundaries as if they automatically determine the correct user experience.

They do not.

Use new tabs when preserving the current context provides an actual benefit.

Opening every internal link in the same way

Internal navigation normally belongs to the site’s ordinary browsing flow.

Do not apply a blanket target="_blank" rule to every anchor element.

Assuming target=”_blank” is an SEO technique

It controls the browsing context, not search-engine ranking.

SEO relationship attributes are a separate issue.

Adding nofollow to every external link

A normal editorial reference does not automatically require nofollow.

Use link relationship attributes according to the actual relationship with the destination.

Adding noreferrer without considering analytics

noreferrer changes the information provided to the destination.

Use it when that privacy behavior is desired, not as decorative boilerplate.

Ignoring accessibility

Unexpected tabs or windows can confuse users who rely on assistive technologies or conventional Back-button navigation.

Communicate significant changes of context.

Using JavaScript instead of real links

A navigation element should normally be a real <a> element with a valid href.

This preserves browser functionality such as copying the URL, opening it through the context menu and using normal keyboard interactions.

Confusing external navigation with third-party requests

Linking to an external website is not the same as automatically loading a third-party script, font, iframe or tracking resource when your page loads.

The privacy and performance implications are different.

For that distinction, see WordPress Privacy and Third-Party Requests and CDN vs. Self-Hosted Assets in WordPress.

Related guides

• noopener, noreferrer and nofollow, explained
• WordPress Privacy and Third-Party Requests
• WordPress Canonical URLs, Explained
• How to Migrate WordPress URLs Safely
• WordPress Custom Post Types and SEO
• What Is an XML Sitemap and Why Does It Matter?

Final recommendation

External links should not open in a new tab simply because they are external.

They should open in a new tab when parallel navigation provides a meaningful benefit.

Technical documentation, research sources, citations and external tools used alongside the current page are strong examples. In those situations, preserving the original article can make it easier for visitors to consult another resource and return to their previous context.

But forcing every external destination into another tab removes part of the user’s control over navigation and can create accessibility and usability problems.

A strong WordPress link policy therefore separates several decisions that are too often mixed together:

• target="_blank" determines the browsing context;
• noopener concerns the opener relationship;
• noreferrer concerns referrer information;
• nofollow, sponsored and ugc qualify relationships for search engines;
• internal versus external classification determines which links should be affected by a site-wide policy.

None of those decisions should automatically imply all the others.

For occasional external references, WordPress’s individual Open in new tab option may be sufficient. For websites that need a consistent site-wide rule, TheOneWP’s External Links feature can centralize the behavior instead of relying on editors to configure links one at a time.

The objective is not to keep visitors trapped on your website by accumulating browser tabs. It is to make navigation predictable and useful.

When the external resource complements the current page, a new tab can preserve context. When the external resource is simply the visitor’s next destination, normal same-tab navigation may be the better choice.