Does HTML Coding Indentation makes any difference from crawlers..

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by elle19570, Jun 2, 2006.

  1. #1
    Hii,
    My confusion is, i want to knw if i follow the coding indentation .i.e. normally used by programmers in coding web pages or if i code the webpage in HTML without any indentation methods, then does the crawling effects gets disturbed or not.?? and does the indentation affects the crawling of crawlers??
     
    elle19570, Jun 2, 2006 IP
  2. brian394

    brian394 Well-Known Member

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    #2
    Short answer...no. Indentation is only for human eyes. When spiders come along and crawl your site all they're looking for is your content. They ignore just about every HTML tag you have and just look for the content contained within those tags. There are a few exceptions to this rule of course, such as your <title> and <h1> and <meta> tags which have special meaning to the search engines, but as far as indentation goes, no it makes no difference. The only reason I can think of why you would not want to indent your code would be to make your filesize smaller (only by a fraction though) or to make it harder for people to understand. But if the goal is to make it harder for people to understand you might as well delete all whitespace and newline characters while you're at it :)
     
    brian394, Jun 2, 2006 IP
  3. classifieds

    classifieds Sopchoppy Flash

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    #3
    Removing spaces and newline characters can significantly reduce your file sizes depending on how many lines of code there are.

    This can be a big issue for dial-up users and shaving a few seconds off of each page load could have a dramatic impact for your site and your users.

    -jay
     
    classifieds, Jun 2, 2006 IP
  4. kk5st

    kk5st Prominent Member

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    #4
    With table based layouts, that can be of consequence. If you're using well structured, semantic markup in a css based layout, the savings are negligible. Just leaving the tables behind in favor of good markup can, in my experience, save ⅓–½ in file size. Further reductions bought at the expense of human readability are of no value.

    cheers,

    gary
     
    kk5st, Jun 2, 2006 IP