Using P3P you get a free backlink to W3C?

[Webnauts]

As an advocate of the Web Standards, and not a Web Anarchist, I feel the necessity to spread the word, that keeping web standards homogenous is very important. If you want to know why, have a look here: http://www.out-law.com/page-6946

Before you start cooking, while you think it is a post again about that standards stuff, sit back and relax, and don't think of that at all.

It is an SEO issue. Or I better say I have a very little SEO question.

We have implemented on our web site the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), recommended by W3C.

Then we checked as required if it validates, and when we were done, we have submitted it to a W3C Admin, he validated it too, and then he have published our site on this page: http://www.w3.org/P3P/

If you look there, you will find on a list the name of our company "Webnauts Net", without a link, just hardcoded, and look at the Google directory here http://www.google.com/search?q=www.w...&cat=gwd%2FTop

What is W3C doing there? I don't get that.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

What is W3C doing there? I don't get that.

Simply promoting their "product".

They're trying to sell "jumping on the bandwagon" by listing all the sites that subscribed to P3P.

Dave

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Simply promoting their "product".

They're trying to sell "jumping on the bandwagon" by listing all the sites that subscribed to P3P.

Dave

WOW! What a way to promote P3P. :)

[Narasinha]

Perhaps Google has added P3P to the many factors in their algorithm, as they have done with the age of the domain name (See The Age of a Domain Name on webconfs.com).

It appears that they want to have some way to ascertain the reliability or trustworthiness of a page. Obviously, this is a very difficult thing to do with a computer algorithm, no matter how complicated. I guess the P3P information may be another of Google's indicators.

[Webnauts]

Ah, now there is another important issue I must mention here.

We submitted and are included two pages of our web site at DMOZ.

Why does the Firefox SEOBook Toolbar show me since the update that we have 3 entries there?

Isn't that weird? Oh, I know that the first thought here would be:

It is a bug of the extension.

Please check that out before you respond. :)

[Tim]

I hope this isn't too off topic but I'm curious.

I can see how age of domain and P3P can be considered indicators of reliability or trustworthiness of a page and that these would be fairly easy for Google to incorporate into their algorithms but is there any evidence that either accessibility or usability are also factors that they use? If so, how?

I can understand that accessibility is fairly straight forward to ascertain, Google's analysers simply look for tags like; alt, longdesc, summary, label, title and tab index. But what would be the quantifiable indicators of usability? Valid markup doesn't in anyway indicate ease of use or good design. Succinct textual content and clear, logical navigation is easy for users to spot but how would this be added to an algorithm?

[Webnauts]

Tim I would like to make my answer so short as possible here, while I am affraid that the discussion might turn out to a war against web standards again, and that will piss me off for good. :)

So here we go:

What do search engines mainly want to see when they crawl a page? From my experience, the "content".

What do blind and text browsers users prefer to see first? The "content". More about this here: http://www.usability.com.au/resources/source-order.cfm

Consider that editing documents with valid markup, doesn't mean that the documents are accessible or usable.

For example:

If using longdesc, alt tags, title attributes, etc, doesn't make a document more accessible or usable, when they are meaningless for the users. And such crap happens, when editors use them for keyword stuffing.

Result? Bad accessibility and bad usability. And Bad SEO!

About the site navigation, which is a major factor in terms of accessibility and usability, so far I know it is a major factor for Search Engines too.

There is so much I can tell about all this, but definetelly not in the forums here. I had here so much bad experience by doing that, but at least Googles last update confirmed that me any my excellent team and site rules!

I prefer to start a discussion about this, in our own discussion forums.

By the way. The key of my recent Google PR success was: Semantics! Don't ask me here though what that means. :) Better PM me, and I will try to explain.

Thanks.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Tim

Succinct textual content and clear, logical navigation is easy for users to spot but how would this be added to an algorithm?

Tim you ever hear of "search engine pyramid themeing"? It is an old concept, but it never was given much through. Mmost just do it because it makes sense.



I definitely feel some sort of association is applied to how your internal link structure is created. I think great internal linking, with not only correct anchor text, but under stable themeing by the way of pyramids (Home page>Category>Product page>Etc.) is also involved.

[Tim]

Webnauts and incrediblehelp,

Thank you.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I definitely feel some sort of association is applied to how your internal link structure is created. I think great internal linking, with not only correct anchor text, but under stable themeing by the way of pyramids (Home page>Category>Product page>Etc. is also involved.

I tend to agree, and not simply for ease of spiders.

This is where I think "trust" comes into play. Each page linking to it's logical subsequent page allows that subsequent page to become more "trusted" whereas linking "out" can cause that page to lose its' trusted value.

Dave

[Webnauts]

OK, so far. Now back to the topic.

The backlink from W3C was the original topic, but it has expanded to trustworthiness in general. Or not?

My question starting the thread was, how P3P may affect trustworthiness.

Or did I understand something wrong?

If not, do you have any ideas?