Invalid html in ads

I'm going through and validating my site and I found an ad that has invalid html in it.

This is being a little nitpicky, I'm sure, for some people, but for some strange reason it really bugs me when there is invalid html around. Mainly because of all the work I've gone through to make my pages validate.

Anyhow, when a url has an & in it, the url should read &

http://www.domain.com/index.php?product=tv[COLOR=Red][B]&[/B][/COLOR]style=bigscreen

Code (markup):

should be:

http://www.domain.com/index.php?product=tv[COLOR=Red][B]&[/B][/COLOR]style=bigscreen

Code (markup):

I don't want to single out one advertiser, there are at least two that I've found in my ads text file - it's easy to spot by searching for "&".

 

I am sorry to say, you are incorrect.
The url http://www.domain.com/index.php?product=tv&style=bigscreen is perfectly correct.
The "&" is used to concatenate url variables.
"product" and "style" are variables.

 

tv and style

 

Yes it is correct, unless you want to validate it. W3C does not like links with the ampersand it requires the "&" in the code versus the "&" or it will generate an error.

 

It's a correct form for a url, but if you are including the url in an html page, it should be coded properly - with an &

yes, it is nitpicky since it doesn't break anything other than an html validator that I can think of, but I stand firm in my belief that I am correct

 

nevetS is correct, it should be & to be compliant with the W3C standards... I'm also a "Open the Web" idealist, even though only one of my websites is truly W3C compliant.

It's one step to ensure compability with the latest browsers...

 

Why are people so obsessed with WC3?? My main site's code is a total mess, and I have top 5 rankings on every search engine

 

Same here.

 

Me too...I am afraid that if I correct my code that google might drop my pages...lol

 

There is a school of though by some people, 1 moderator I know of for sure on another forum insists it is true, that validation helps in the SERP's with all other things being equal, but as of yet I have never seen proof one way or another.

 

Me too, and I have yet to see a php site validate properly (I haven't hunted high and low or anything), but last time I checked even DP was all messed up. To me, the main thing is that I am #1 in all SE's and my business is growing. It can be done without spending hours making sure you validate as I have more important things to do with my time. And so far no problems with the latest browsers.