I’ve come up with a work around for the poor displaying of a badge link, I now insert a space at the start of the new link so at least now people see a nicer badge description instead of just a URL.
For example, no leading space:
https://meta.discourse.org/badges/140/support-advocate
One leading space:
Better 
I’m guessing when linking to a badge it’s just following the same principle as if linking to a regular topic or a post 