does too many nested tables in design affect crawling?...

does too many nested tables in design affect search engine crawling or indexing?...

 

Yes, I've had problems with about 7 tables deep. The pages all went suplimental.

THere was also a problem in that Google did not count the links that were nested that deep. When you used the link tools Google provides with the webmaster tools there were no interior links counted even when Google used these links to find the pages.

When I changed most of the tables to Divs, Google slowly started counting the interior links.

This happened on an olded site (about 3 years old)

 

yes the nested table creates problem for crawler.

 

just stay away from tables as much as possible.

Tables are meant for, well, exactly what they say, tabular data -- NOT DESIGN.

 

crap...i really like tables cause you have lots of control and it is cery stable...


but i dont really have tables nested 7 deep,hehe...maybe 3 the most...


is that fine?...

 

Sparely use of tables should have no effect at all.

 

Try to stick to using tables for presenting 'tabular information' only. For example an overview of (statistical) research results. Don't use tables for positioning your information for instance.

 

One of my websites has tables nested at least 4 deep, and it ranks extremely well for extremely competive terms. I think making sure the HTML for the tables validates is more important.

 

Hard to say, I have sites with 3-4 that seem to be doing alright, but I consider that as taking a chance. Googles webmaster tools were the only clue I had that there was a problem, that doesn't meen that Google isn't still having a problem and I am just not finding evedence of it.

I picked up several sites that were heavily nested, in most cases you can switch to Div's pretty easily without doing a major site change. I normally try to get them down to only nesting one table in another, and if possible no table nesting at all. (and few table used for that matter)

 

Will tables keep search engines from crawling your web site?

No, this is a myth.

Search engines are designed to read HTML and tables are just HTML. To illustrate using an analogy, imagine if you were programming an application and you nested several IF statements. You can nest IF statements to your hearts content. As long as your code is sound, your program will still work. The reading of nested tables by search engines works similarly. If this were true you would see an equal number of warnings against nesting too many CSS DIVs.

Myth busted.

FYI: With CSS you have much better control over the flow of your content. By using nested DIVs and positioning you can place visible text and graphics wherever you desire and with better control than tables offer.

 

Komodo Tale
I believe you have a few inaccuracies.

First spiders read rows not columns.

Consider the html

Table (table)
Row (tr)
Cell (td)
Cell (td)
Row end (/tr)
Row (tr)
Cell (td)
Cell (td)
Row end (/tr)
Table end

The problem is when your column spans two or more rows as is frequently use with left hand navigation (table design sites)

Then the spider will index the more useless information before the content.


Second Divs vrs Table nesting.

If I put a div in a div in a div, there are three iterations the spider has to go through to reach the innermost content

A single table contains at least 3 levels, Table, row, cell. That means with my more extreme example of nesting 7 deep means the spider has it iterate 27 times verses 7. That is with a very simple table with one row and 1 cell. They are rarely that simple. People using tables for design very often use cells and rows to separate content so many, many rows are used.

With css you normally separate content with margins and padding this greatly reduces the code and the work of the spider, as well as the visitors browser. In my 7 nesting example there was a very noticable difference in the time it took the browser to render the div version I made with the same exact content.

Google will index sites with multiple tables nested, but there does appear to reach a point where they start having problems with the resulting data. Which goes back to the point it is better not to get too carried away with the nesting.

 

I used to use tables like crazy, but have cut down a bit. I go 2 levels deep at the most and try to use divs as much as possible, which gives me headaches a lot of times. IE sucks when it comes to CSS . Unfotrunately 75% of my users are IE Users. ARGH <table>...<table>...</table>...</table>

 

I think its all bullshit, I know someone who has up to 8 tables deep , and his site is a PR6 and all static, and the site kicks ass in the serps, over 20,000 pages indexed

If the spider wants the info they will grab it , trust me

The biggest problem, is 60% of sites have garbage or duplicate content

I.e, game sites, article sites...etc

Write some solid original and USE FULL content and you'll get result regardless on table depth

 

This is what happens when I post before drinking my coffee. I should have gotten some of that free Starbucks today. Argh.

Speaking of coffee, SundayBrew, tables vs. DIVs will not vault a listing over strong competition. However, I have often seen the switch to CSS boost ranking a few to several notches. In SEO we like to say 'when all else is equal' such and such a factor will boost your rankings. Add enough of those 'when all else is equal' signals of quality into your game plan and suddenly you have a well optimized document that is ruling the roost.

 

I second sunday brew.

 

Best post in this thread. If your content is good enough, google will overlook little things

 

Well, IMO "Search Spiders" doesn't need to iterate over tables because, they are getting content, no displaying it.
However browsers must iterate over tables to calculate width and height of each cell of the table to display it correctly.
And a TIP, you can reduce the iteration process, and speed up table rendering using the "table-layout:fixed;" style
.

 

Possibly true, it would be much easyer to remove all tags and just weigh the content. However the more recent versions of spiders are trying to look at the content the way humans do.

To do that would meen they would have to be able to determin how the contect is laid out on the page. Likely putting greater weight on the first and last paragraphs etc.

I'm guessing to do this they would need to do some form of rendering. Although possibly not as complete as a browser would.

Thanks For the table-layout:fixed; tip. I'll look into that.

And I agree with Komodo Tale, sometimes we nit pick in SEO, but each of those little items add up, Good content is very important, but it is only one of many factors.

 

Adac,

That's not true. At this point the crawlers are not interpreting layout. Maybe in the future but not now - I've never seen G/Y/M load my css files. I've got a mix of css only and table based sites with minimal css and the only issue I've been able to identify is the ratio of text/links in the templates (navigation, footer, header, etc.) versus the content on the page.

It's been stated repeatedly by Google representatives that they are only interested in content, not style. This may change and I'm not advocating using poor design techniques but at the moment it's all about content.

 

True, THey are not looking a css or the style attributes at this time. Sorry if I gave that impression, I was more reffering to where on the page the text is not how it looks.

Even that is hidden to them when you are using Divs placed by css. Using that method you can put the most important text elements high in the source and other elements like navigation lower and then move them with your css.

With tables you don't have that option.