New MSNBot Favoring W3C Validation?

[greeneagle]

Toward the beginning of this month we went through the W3C Validation re-coding exercise on one of our client's home pages, as time allows we will complete every page: http://www.tubeltechnologies.com/

Coincidently, We are seeing many new search engine bots show up including the new MSNBot. This client’s traffic has tripled in the last three or four days.

We are not seeing the same bot activity on other client sites and MSNbot hasn’t visited the other sites yet.

1) Is anyone else seeing similar results on validated pages over no-validated?

2) Does MSNBot or any of the other bots favor W3C validated pages in the rush for relevancy?

It is starting to appear that way to us.

It’s not so far fetched to think that a secret relevancy weapon in the MSNbot alogrithms is to prioritize validated pages, is it?

Wouldn't it benefit the W3C (an academic organization) to have Microsoft throw their weight behind them?

Ken

[fathom]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

Toward the beginning of this month we went through the W3C Validation re-coding exercise on one of our client's home pages, as time allows we will complete every page: http://www.tubeltechnologies.com/

Coincidently, We are seeing many new search engine bots show up including the new MSNBot. This client’s traffic has tripled in the last three or four days.

We are not seeing the same bot activity on other client sites and MSNbot hasn’t visited the other sites yet.

1) Is anyone else seeing similar results on validated pages over no-validated?

2) Does MSNBot or any of the other bots favor W3C validated pages in the rush for relevancy?

It is starting to appear that way to us.

It’s not so far fetched to think that a secret relevancy weapon in the MSNbot alogrithms is to prioritize validated pages, is it?

Wouldn't it benefit the W3C (an academic organization) to have Microsoft throw their weight behind them?

Ken

While extremely difficult to say "independently" of any other consideration - I tend to lean towards compliancy with "a standard" is better than not.

Additionally as Microsoft is a consortium member it does add credibility to the argument - yet I doubt they will ever confirm - one way or the other.

[russtay]

What does it mean to be W3C Validated?

[greeneagle]

russtay,

Probably the best place to start is here:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Points/
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/W3C-FAQs

Hope this helps,
Ken

[minstrel]

W3C has proposed a set of standards for web page coding. This is not their first version of the standards (publicly they are up to version 4.01) but it has been a slow process to attract sufficient interest in the wider internet community (i.e., beyond hobbyists, purists, and the most focused designers and SEO people) so there are still a lot of pages, perhaps the majority of pages on the net, that do not conform to the standards and a lot of browsers that pay little attention.

I don't know, of course, but I would strongly doubt that spiders care much whether a site is W3C compliant. The relevant factors, where you seem to see a difference, are more likely to be recency and extent of changes to the site, which will bring back spiders more frequently, and in cases where W3C compliance produces cleaner and leaner code (which should be but isn't always the case) it may help the spiders to get to the relevant data they need before they get nored and take a coffee break (e.g., there are page size limitations beyond which the spiders won't read, although most pages won't get to that limit).

[Mel]

I think to call the W3C recommendations standards may be confusing, in that they are called recommendations by the W3C and there are no organizations in place to endorse them as standards.

There is often an implied nuance that somehow your site will be better ranked or faster to load or perhaps will view better in some or all browsers, but the reverse is often the case.

There are some who take pride in having built sites that are W3c compliant and I congratulate them on their accomplishments, but the bottom line is that most sites are not compliant and work just fine. In fact most browsers are not compliant with W3C recommendations.

[Dragonsi]

Admitidly, non of my sites/pages are validated yet to the W3C standard (it is something that I keep meaning to get around to) but I have noticed that the NSMbot has visited my Pembdirectory site 44 times this month alone where my other sites (including clients) have only been visited less than 6 times per site.

This could be due to the Pembdirectory site get far greater visitors and has more links pointing to it than the other sites.

[fathom]

Originally Posted by Mel

There are some who take pride in having built sites that are W3c compliant and I congratulate them on their accomplishments, but the bottom line is that most sites are not compliant and work just fine. In fact most browsers are not compliant with W3C recommendations.

This struck me a little funny... while it is true that most websites are not W3C compliant are you sure that's the "bottom line".

I mean most websites are not ranked #1 but work perfectly in browsers to... so it makes it better not to be #1? Almost an oxymoron!

Also - taking pride in sites that are W3C compliant isn't the issue.... forward think is. :-)

[Mel]

I am not saying that you should not validate your code if you wish to do so, but IMO it may not make your site work any better and it certainly will not help it rank better.

The assumption that the W3C recommendations are going to be important in the future may or may not be correct but they are IMO of little practical importance at this time.