W3C Compliance & SEO - Do they Really Care?

[staker2]

I have just found out that my Stats tracking code is non W3C compliant.

Should I consider switching to another solution that is W3C compliant, or do the search engines really care about this?

Even a little bit of caring would be enough for me to drop them. If it is the difference between being #2 and #1, again that is enough.

Best Regards,

Staker2

[jestep]

What system do you use?

Many can still be made compliant with a few extra snippets. I don't think W3C a huge deal unless there are large structural errors in your code. I like to keep my sites as close as possible to full compliance, but I've never seen any evidence that it matters.

[SEOforGoogle]

Yahoo says it doesn't care at all if a page is w3c validated. Some SEO'rs insist that it helps in ranking.

Technically, it will make your site laod up faster in a browser if everything is compliant, but whether or not that helps determine your ranking is not known.

My .02 would be that it doesn't...

[janeth]

I have seen a lot of proof that it does not matter but none that would show it does matter.

Most SEO people that say it does matter usually have a service where they charge money to validate your site.

I wonder if that is why they say it matters?

[Faglork]

Why not giving an URL? It probably could be made compliant in a minute.

Alex

[beanstalk]

Thought this might be of interest. An article titled "W3C Compliance & SEO".

Hope it helps.

[roam_dx]

statcounter offers W3C compliant code,i think.

[khurramali]

There is no harm in standardization of the code.

Makes easier to understand and update also.

It can only bring benefits; it might limit some of the functionality that you would want.

But you always have to make some compromises in life, and this is one of those things which does not harm.

[Faglork]

statcounter offers W3C compliant code,i think.

Yes.

[roam_dx]

as far as SEO goes, compliance from my experience has little impact if any...yet. I manage both kinds of sites(compliant and non) but don't see any proof of SEO benefits.

There are other benefits, which you will find explianed on the W3C site. IMHO the only reason to build such sites - semantics, seperation of content from design, usability and long term scalability. Not SEO.