Just a thought - Irish SEO, Marketing & Webmaster Discussion

TheMenace · #1 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 07:57 AM

Does anyone think there would be any merit in Google taking web standards and semantics into account more when ranking pages? Or perhaps penalising sites that are coded poorly, use tables for layout, etc?

davidbehan · #2 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 09:08 AM

It would be nice but could you imagine the up roar! I've gotten some really good info that I've been looking for from really badly designed websites... how would it combat that?

Cormac · #3 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 09:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMenace

Does anyone think there would be any merit in Google taking web standards and semantics into account more when ranking pages? Or perhaps penalising sites that are coded poorly, use tables for layout, etc?

But not all tables are bad. When the information far outweighs design then tabular tables are green for go. Vbulletin uses tables. I think most forums do actually.

Don't well coded CSS sites have a semantic advantage over standard table based sites anyway?

Google would have to implement standards on their own sites if they were to make it a factor in SERP ranking. I can't see it happening but certainly in the next few months we are going to see a good few tweaks of G's algorithm.

glengara · #4 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 09:51 AM

The usual answer to this is since Gs' own home page fails validation they're unlikely to put much store on it.

OTOH there's a big difference between validation and bad coding, and anything that might help the spiders index and pages stay out of the supplemental index is worth making, IMO...

niall · #5 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glengara

The usual answer to this is since Gs' own home page fails validation they're unlikely to put much store on it.

Seemingly Google do have a reason for failing to validate on the main page. If you look at the source it is as simple as possible. Every byte counts when you are serving more pages per second than most of us will serve in a year.

glengara · #6 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 12:22 PM

Bandwidth saving still seems an issue with G so bloated coding could get you supplemented, not sure it would apply to the CSS/tables argument though....

Gavin · #7 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 02:33 PM

I knew Matt Cutts made a statement about this a while back but after a quick power search I couldn't find it on his blog. Take from Halfdeck's post.

Quote:

WC3 validation, does it matter? “40% of all html has syntax errors. and there’s no way search engines can remove 40% of its index, just because somebody didn’t validate. I wouldn’t put it at the top of the list.” Could be a signal in the future especially after the release of accessibility search.

It would be a dangerous move if they started taking validation into account, think of the many sites that would get burned.

The most important aspect of coding and SEO is making sure the bots can crawl it. The cleaner the code the easier it will be for them. I find the use of CSS and Divs works very well.

Cormac · #8 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 03:23 PM

A lot of sites which use text editors in their CMSs' break validation quite easily as well.

TheMenace · #9 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cormac

But not all tables are bad. When the information far outweighs design then tabular tables are green for go.

Well yeah, tables for tabular data is a given of course. But for general laying they're a no-no. Having said that, HTML 4.01 is still a standard so it's hard to know.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cormac

Don't well coded CSS sites have a semantic advantage over standard table based sites anyway?

Yes, but from what I can gather it's not really that weighted. Nested headings and such are good for your ranking but semantic code doesn't seem too high on G's list of priorities.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cormac

Google would have to implement standards on their own sites if they were to make it a factor in SERP ranking. I can't see it happening but certainly in the next few months we are going to see a good few tweaks of G's algorithm.

There seem to be a few ongoing tweaks anyway. My bloody ranking is going up and down like a yoyo. One minute I'm ranked 21st, the next I'm down to 80th and then back up again... and then down again. It's a nonsense really.

georgiecasey · #10 (**permalink**) 24-04-2007, 09:32 PM

Cutt's said it one of his iraqi hostage looking videos that it doesn't matter.
Optimize for Search Engines or Users? - Google Video

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