one of the fields on mydatabase stores a weburl

but when i print it, it does not appear as a hyperlink

i have tried to print the variable using this

PHP Code:
"<a href=>$linkfield</a>" 
it is retrieved as part of a search and should take me to the link page, but the link when clicked on keeps me on the search reult page, it seems to store the search hyperlink instead of the one i am trying to print from the database