About This HTML Issue
The href value on the <a> element contains a literal > character, which is not allowed in a URL path.
The URL standard does not allow a raw > anywhere in a URL. Writing it as > doesn't change that, because the HTML parser decodes > back to > before the URL is read. Browsers still follow the link, but they percent-encode the character themselves and request a path that usually does not exist.
When the value starts with >, it is often not an address at all. Some sites put a > in front of link text as a small arrow, as in > Read the full report. If an editor pastes that text into the URL field of a CMS instead of the label field, the whole sentence becomes the href, and the browser treats it as a relative path to a missing page. A stray > at the end of a value, like href="/reports/annual>", is usually a typo in the markup.
Put the real address in href and keep the text inside the element. The validator reports only the first illegal character in a value, so if you remove the > but leave the sentence in href, it will report the spaces next. If a path really needs a >, write it as %3E.
Invalid example
<a href="> Read the full report">Read the full report</a>
Valid example
<a href="/reports/annual">Read the full report</a>
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