Opinions on w3c validity?

What do you think about w3c validity? I personally spend a lot of time making sure each one of my website pages are 100% valid with no errors or warnings, because this can only increase the speed at which a spider crawls your page, lessens the chance of the spider hitting an error, and well it's just nice to know it's valid code.

Although I haven't seen any documentation with evidence that it is an important factor in SEO, I still feel that the little extra effort it requires to make your code valid is worth it.

What are your opinions?

 

As long as there are no serious coding errors (like unclosed tags or missing tags), whether or not a page is W3C compliant doesn't matter to spiders/search engines - it's not an SEO factor.

If you choose to make your page W3C compliant or feel you have to for other reasons, go ahead - but don't expect it to affect your SE rankings.

Also, understand that there's a difference between "valid code" (i.e., code that does not contain any errors) and "W3C validated code" (i.e., code that complies with the W3C recommendations).

 

I think it's well worth doing, because:
it ensures your code is valid
it helps with (some) accessability
it's good to see someone do a professional job
if it ever does become an SEO factor you are ahead of the game.

 

I raised this same question a couple of weeks ago on another forum and the concensus there was the same - if your browser can read it, the SEs can read it. It makes absolutely no difference to SEO.

Personnally though, I feel like Stuw. It makes a more professional and portable site. And who is to say that one day/any day, one or more SEs might suddenly decide that of two similarly weighted pages the one that is better designed for cross-browser & cross-platform distribution should be serped higher? In which case, as Stuw says, you'd be ahead of the game!

 

Why on earth would that happen? Why would spiders, who read text, care? Why would search engines, who index content, care?

 

Why would they care about how long a domain has been registered?

Personally I don't do it out of SEO. I do it beacuase it's good to have a standard to adhere to and I think the w3c does and has done in the past a good job.

 

I make all my sites valid html 4.01 and CSS through w3.

It does not help with google but yahoo/msn seem to like sites with it done.

I don't do it for search engines though.

 

Because that indicates longevity of a site, which is something they factor into "importance".

 

Since the W3C's language specification defines what is or is not HTML, failing W3C validation means your code does contain errors. Just because a browser might still manage to make some kind of sense out of it doesn't make it correct, just as a written passage with spelling and grammatical mistakes is not considered correct because a reader can still figure it out.

Every rule and recommendation in the HTML specification exists because it provides an improvement in some way: some help maintainability, some help accessibility, and some help flexibility. Because of these benefits, every rule is a good one to follow.

Of course, if you don't care about reaching as many people and devices as possible, and you don't care about simplifying the chore of implementing design changes, then you can continue to write code however you feel like. Though, don't fool yourself into thinking that anything some visual browser manages to interpret is correct for that reason.

I have no knowledge how correct code affects search engines, but my guess would be it makes little difference, if any.

 

its easily accomplished, so why not spend additional 5 mins to make sure your code is valid?

 

Your site can look fine through your browswer, but there can still be errors in your code. These 'errors' in your code can also be the source for why your website looks different when using different browsers.

Only good can come from have standard html versus non-standard code, even if it is not a significant SEO factor (although I doubt anyone has tested it).

Websites which pass w3c validation are rare...

 

No, it does not.

No it does not.

 

as I understand it W3C has no real authority and are mainly an advisory group working towards unified standards

 

If you have any reasonably complex stylings on your site, you've become aware of the fact that IE does not implement standards. If you are trying to implement a standards compliant xhtml site, it will not display at all in IE.

Having an error free site is problematic if you want something pretty. If you have a basic site, with minor css stylings, then being standards compliant is not a problem. I spent a long time trying to make one of my sites compliant and though I'm happy I got it 99% of the way there, I feel very much that it was wasted effort when looking at my ROI.

Google does not meet standards, I'm sure because they save a boatload of money skipping ineffective bloat. Yahoo is the same way.

One positive aspect of working towards compliance is a much better understanding of your html/php coding syntax. There have been rumors of standards compliance affecting SEO in some minor way - but I think as long as you aren't really screwing the pooch, it will not make a difference.

 

Exactly right. And they've been trying to do that since like 1999 or so...

 

Oh, I thought it had been longer than that. Didn't the english guy that came up with html lead them for a while? Forgive my ignorance - can't remember his name.

 

You may be right. I think the current recommendations date back at least that long but it may be longer.

 

The head of the W3C invented HTML. The W3C also owns HTML as a trademark. Both technically and legally, the W3C's definition of HTML is the definition of HTML. Just like what Microsoft decides Windows to be is what Windows is; if some hobbyist makes an OS and also calls it Windows, the term Windows still refers to Microsoft Windows exclusively since it is trademarked. And HTML still refers to the W3C's HTML spec exclusively regardless of what anyone else trys to invent. Browsers, of course, may implement whatever they choose. But interpreting HTML-like code does not mean a browser has redefined the language specification.

That's exactly right. As I mentioned aboved, the W3C defines HTML, but browsers are under no legal obligation to conform.

IE has supported standard markup and styling since v5.5 well enough to build fully standards compliant pages.

They've been trying to do what since 1999? The W3C's activities today are the same as they were prior to HTML 4. Though, HTML 4 was released in 1997, btw.

 

IE does not support xhtml, and does not support css standards - just google around for IE and CSS and you will find an enormous amount of hacks out there.

As far as HTML 4.01 goes, IE treats ID attributes case insensitive, title attributes do not treat a carriage return as a space, has no support for the abbr tag, button value attributes default to "button" instead of "submit", no support for the col event attribute, is unstable when placing an event attribute on a noscript tag, is missing the complete set of cell alignment attributes, the list goes on... at least that's IE 6.

All browsers have problems with full compliance to standards, but IE has the worst track record of major browsers.

Here's a comparison of IE/firefox/Opera as far as standards support for HTML 4.01

They may have been better as of IE5, but not standards compliant.

 

The guy that came up with html - Tim Berners Lee (English)

W3C founded in 1994

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/

So I still support making websites to their standards, or at least aiming to.