Hi! i am just just wondering do we get any benefits by having our sites XHTML Valid in Serps? I seen many sites which are valid and many which are not? i mean does being valid help us in SEO? Share you opinions Thanks
I also have an invalid site that ranks well. I didn't bother fixing it since I get frustrated trying to make it valid, so I don't bother anymore. People make it valid, IMO, so that it shows correctly across different browsers. Right? I'd also say SEO since there would be a clean code, but eh... I'm not to sure.
You write valid code because it makes the website more cross-browser compatible. It will display more correctly in current, past and future web browsers, made by various developers and on multiple operating systems.
I'm not convinced it would help in the SERPs, unless your code is absolutely awful (invalid) so the spider can't understand it then you would be disadvantaged.
'Accessibility' - This, in the eye of the beholder, tells a long story. To cut the long story short, Google says to create a site designed for the user, NOT for the search engine. The more 'user friendly', ie. accessible, the site is, the better the search engines, specifically Google, will see your site as being more accessible, and therefore you'll get better SERP rankings. Remember, there are ~230 factors which effect your SERP rankings, hence why a non-valid site can gain higher than a validated site and vice-versa!
Yep, it's in your own interest to have a mostly valid sites, so a maximum number of your visitors see the site in the way you intend it...but google would rank a peanut butter sandwhich well if the spider could crawl it and it would have loads of backlinks.
I dont think google give much value to validation. Just checked google.com at w3c.org and got 47 errors. check here http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=h...(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0
I guess Google cares more about their bandwidth than validation, their code is pretty damn optimized for low bandwidth usage, they even ignored a doctype! With millions (billions?) page views per day bandwidth is a valid consideration I'm sure.