If your site is not validated by the w3c validator does it affect its placement in search engines or something like this? site is gghacks.com but when I install a certain mod (tinyportal) it is not xhtml validated anymore. Thanks.
Very rarely - depends on what the actual error. There are items that will impact both (eg missing alt attributes for images) but it impacts SEO as you are "missing a trick" rather than because it isnt xHTML 1.0 Strict
of course not. but I think complying with w3c validation is a plus for the admin/owner. well, that's just for me.
validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gghacks.com%2Findex.php :/ 61 errors suck. I think it's pretty easy to fix them it's just that my time and knowledge is very low... I'm just wondering if google checks the amount of errors on the page... for example if its over 50 it will be tracked very low... and to think that before i was validated XD
Google doesn't care or even see any errors. A shitty site will be crawled, just usually very very slowly, and if you did silly things like using images for the name of the page or for links, the bots can't "read" an image (nor can anyone else without images on). Valid code means nothing to a robot. But you do want it to be able to quickly canvas your site and see everything you want the human visitor to see, right?
ever since I learned about that w3c thing, I tried to correct all my errors and eventually, now, I can create and error-free page, though sometimes I forgot the / in the <img> tag or in the <br /> tag.
If valid code mattered, Google would be penalising its own home page among the majority of other web sites.