The organic dyes have been synthesized via a ‘Click’ reaction and employed in dye-sensitized solar cells, in which an electron-deficient 1,2,3-triazole unit is introduced to connect the thienyl group and the phenoxyl group as π-linkers. Compared with the non-thiophene containing reference dye, these new dyes show stronger intramolecular charge transfer and higher molar extinction coefficient with incremental increase of thienyl groups. Thus, the short-circuit current of solar cells based on them is greatly increased. Moreover, the existence of 1,2,3-triazole unit is favorable for the charge separation that can retard the charge recombination and improve the open circuit voltage. Consequently, the solar cell based on the dithienyl containing dye presents the best performance with a Jsc of 10.00 mA cm−2, a Voc of 0.68 V and a FF of 0.71, corresponding to an overall conversion efficiency of 4.81% among them.