validator.w3.org

[supernatural_247]

I went to The W3C Markup Validation Service and checked my site, and it returned 85 errors. So I checked Yahoo, Google, Ebay, iLike (pure CSS site) and various other sites and they all return errors.

Who uses this thing? Everyone seems to rave about how you need to check for errors and whatnot, but if the big guns are doing just fine (heck, even a pure CSS site returned errors and they're using the latest technology), then what's the point of validating with W3.org or validating period?

[weslinda]

Accessibility, Useability, Cross Browser Friendliness are just a few to begin with.

[Webnauts]

Bad code can hurt your search engine ranking.
More about: Promotion Tip: Bad Code Hurts Your Search Engine Ranking by Christine Churchill

[weslinda]

A recent blog of mine that discusses valid html and css.

[kgun]

Try to write a XML document with open and improperly nested tags and see what happens.

The future is XML powered sites:
http://www.webproworld.com/web-site-...documents.html

You will find a more thorough WPW discussion on your topic. Please read this

CSS Destroyed My Rankings

thread, before you continue the discussion.

My conclusion:
You are in good company advocating spagetti coding / markup

[weslinda]

Why do something incorrectly when you can do it correctly and just as easily. All it takes is a little learning and a bit of knowledge and pounding out visually attractive well coded sites can be done by anyone.

[supernatural_247]

Well, I took to heart what you all have said, and I must admit, I was hasty in my irrational statement earlier. It was going on 3 days trying to figure out CSS and all this, and it was really getting to me.

I decided to validate and do what it said, but still using a mixture of HTML tables and CSS (with a XHTML 1.0 Transitional doctype) and I finally received green!

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...2Fdefault2.asp

Thanks guys for not pounding me too hard.

And a word to those of you who might read this and are having a hell of a hard time trying to figure css, doctypes and w3 standards out - patience! (it turned out that once I set my doctype correctly, fixing the other errors were relatively easy)

[weslinda]

Hard work can get you there, and if you are getting stumped, it doesn't hurt to pose questions around here either. You might be suprised what some of us know.

[dharrison]

Originally Posted by supernatural_247

Well, I took to heart what you all have said, and I must admit, I was hasty in my irrational statement earlier. It was going on 3 days trying to figure out CSS and all this, and it was really getting to me.

I decided to validate and do what it said, but still using a mixture of HTML tables and CSS (with a XHTML 1.0 Transitional doctype) and I finally received green!

Result for http://www.ihomeconnect.com/default2.asp - W3C Markup Validator

Thanks guys for not pounding me too hard.

And a word to those of you who might read this and are having a hell of a hard time trying to figure css, doctypes and w3 standards out - patience! (it turned out that once I set my doctype correctly, fixing the other errors were relatively easy)

It is tempting to say "oh no one bothers with this." I've done it myself. But for extra peace of mind, it is always worth taking the time and effort to get the green page.

Well done you for making the right decision.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Bad code can hurt your search engine ranking.
More about: Promotion Tip: Bad Code Hurts Your Search Engine Ranking by Christine Churchill

This article is over 5 years old. I see websites that rank well with bad code all of the time. I must agree though if you can help it, your website should validate. Just makes sense to do it.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

This article is over 5 years old. I see websites that rank well with bad code all of the time.

I thought you would mention that the article is old. And that sites with bad code rank well.
The fact is that if you read the article, you would realize that in that manner nothing changed in SE. If the SE became more intelligent, then physically they would not be able to tolerate bad code as they already do. Think about the link with the video you have send me yesterday about artificial intelligence. And from my experience, clean coded sites rank better than sites with bad code.

Sometime when we have time, we can setup two little sites, with 2 different topics of same competency level, so we can come up with 100% objective results.

[mike]

Why can't I lay off of these threads?

Validated code makes no difference in your search engine ranking whatsoever -- unless it's just so jacked up that the spider can't crawl it.

That is the point blank direct answer. I have sat and watched the engineers mouths move and heard those words actually come out of their mouths at LEAST 10 times.

I'm relatively sure I even have it on video with some of them.

If you want to validate your code -- by all means validate your code. I am not saying -nor have I ever said -- that you shouldn't validate your code. But if you're doing it because you think it is going to impact your SERP... you're wasting your time.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mike

Validated code makes no difference in your search engine ranking whatsoever -- unless it's just so jacked up that the spider can't crawl it.

When a site is jacked up that a spider cannot crawl it in whole or partially, doesn't that have impact on its rankings? For example when parts of the content or linking structure is not crawlable?

Are there any rules which we can follow, like what kind errors can cause such problems so we can avoid?

My opinion is, that if you want to be on the safe side, try to write so clean code as possible.

[Webnauts]

I would like to add an example here. We all know that the title tag, or the heading tags have a certain weight for rankings. Or?

And here is my scenario:

I had a client who was an amateur, and he tried to create a web site using frontpage, but he tried also to edit code manually, and he had after all the following stuff on his pages:

<title=Whatever></title>

<h1=Whatever></h1>

How do you think the Search Engines interpretated the above? As title and heading tags?
I guess not. What do you think?

[Dubbya]

A page can only have one valid title tag, so anything else would be ignored. Logically, one can assume that the occurrence of several title tags indicates either ineptitude or an obvious attempt to game the search engines.

If you intend to use several header tags, the <h2> through <h5> tags are available and, using CSS, can be formatted the same as an <h1> tag.

I did find an article by Scott Hendison that supports these theories and suggestions:

SEO 101 from Seach Commander.com - Header Tag Tips

[Webnauts]

Until recently Google, was recommending webmasters to adhere to their guidelines. But now Matt Cutts at Google said, that we SHOULD adhere to the webmaster guidelines if we want our sites to stay in their index. More: SMX - Googles Matt Cutts on their webmaster guidelines.

So what about this Guideline? "Check for broken links and correct HTML."

Am I missing something again?

[mike]

Well that goes back to making sure your page can be crawled. Of course you should have good links and of course you should have a page that renders properly in browsers. That's a looooong way from saying your site has to be W3C validated.

That isn't why most sites fail validation.

For example:
Google.com fails validation for things like "there is no attribute "WIDTH"." and "document type does not allow element "STYLE" here." and "required attribute "TYPE" not specified."

None of those things impact web crawlability. None of those things are broken links. Of course those are just some of the errors, Google has about 70 on their page according to W3C.

Maybe you can point out a couple that in some way are bound to impact somebody somehow --- or maybe not. Either way I'm not worried about it... Google loads just fine for me. All the links work and it displays nice in my browser.

That's all the validation I need.

By taking Matt's statement about following Google's guidelines and twisting that somehow as an argument in favor of W3C validation, I'd say you are taking some pretty wild liberties with your interpretation.

Are unbroken links part of W3C? Sure they are.

Are unbroken links in Google's guidelines? Sure they are.

Does that mean that Google's guidelines = W3C validation? -- Um, no.