Coding Method of Text Affect?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by Cyrus255, Sep 17, 2006.

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  1. #1
    I have a question which may seem ridiculous but I think it might actually matter.

    If you have your text as ONE LONG line of code.

    -----------text----------text------------->

    Like that. Versus multiple lines

    |----text----text---|
    |----text---text----|
    |---text---text-----|

    Same amount of text, just differently coded.

    You get the idea. Does it matter that the text spans multiple lines instead of one long line? I know search engines will still "read it the same"

    But if you have 100 lines of code and 1 long line of text, would it screw the code-to-content ratio and hurt your serps?

    It's probably ridiculous, but I'm starting to wonder...
     
    Cyrus255, Sep 17, 2006 IP
  2. axemedia

    axemedia Guest

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    #2
    Good question.

    I dont know the answer but i suspect it does not matter.
     
    axemedia, Sep 17, 2006 IP
  3. nevetS

    nevetS Evolving Dragon

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    #3
    I suspect that it would matter not a bit to the SE's - other than perhaps a slight skewing of code-to-content ratio if they consider whitespace content, which is doubtful.
     
    nevetS, Sep 17, 2006 IP
  4. rosiee007

    rosiee007 Notable Member

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    #4
    I think it does matter, especially with CSS files etc. Also, neat code can considerably reduce the file size, which will save you a lot of bandwidth and also load the pages quickly. You can achieve all this by removing extra new line characters, and properly formatting the source code.
     
    rosiee007, Sep 17, 2006 IP
  5. nevetS

    nevetS Evolving Dragon

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    #5
    Certainly the bandwidth savings can compound itself into dollars on a popular site, and save load time on large pages, but I think the question was in relation to search engine rankings.

    I concur that good coding practices make a huge difference in a great many areas, but I sincerely doubt that content structure has anything to do with SE rankings. Perhaps all things being equal, the better performing site would get the edge, but page size and page load times will not significantly change due to coding practices unless your existing coding practice is EXTREMELY verbose.

    That said, getting everything nice and neat into 8k packets can work out nicely for dial-up users.
     
    nevetS, Sep 18, 2006 IP
  6. seopool

    seopool Peon

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    #6
    Some search engines only looks only first 500 to 600 lines,
    At that point we must consider the coding way
     
    seopool, Sep 18, 2006 IP
  7. mad4

    mad4 Peon

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    #7
    Which ones are these?:confused:
     
    mad4, Sep 18, 2006 IP
  8. nevetS

    nevetS Evolving Dragon

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    #8
    At one point, one of the SE's only indexed the first 150K of a file - I forget if it was Yahoo or Google, but I don't think that's a valid statement anymore. I remember recommendations out there to keep your sitemap files under that limit.

    I've never heard anything about line limitations though. Seems like a silly concept.
     
    nevetS, Sep 19, 2006 IP