W3 Validation - Is It a Waste of time??

johnafrankllin · Jun 17, 2008

Hi,
It is really till now not clarified that the W3 validation that we do is really a waste of time or It gives some benefit to our site.
Since in many cases I have seen some sites rock the web in terms of SERP and is not a valid HTML or XHTML Document.
See the case of "web design" (without quote) keyword in google.com, here you will find the site at no 2 is not a valid HTML or XHTML Document but ranks well in SERP.
In the same way you type "seo forum" (without quote) in google.com and you will find forums.seochat.com ranks no 1 with an invalid markup.
So do we really not waste our time in doing validation, since by doing this we try to make our web page search engine friendly, and a site if rank well in major search engines means that it is SE friendly in whatever way the search engine spider looks at it.

tb987 · Jun 17, 2008

The benefit is the knowledge that it will render properly in all users browsers. If you are just targetting IE and Firefox then you need not worry. From an SEO perspective it could be so bad that you are tripping up the browsers used by the search engine spiders - I think this is unlikely.

smeagain · Jun 17, 2008

You could take comfort in the fact that you can turn out shoddy work and in most cases it won't affect SEO or you could just do the job right.

johnafrankllin · Jun 18, 2008

tb987 said:
The benefit is the knowledge that it will render properly in all users browsers. If you are just targetting IE and Firefox then you need not worry. From an SEO perspective it could be so bad that you are tripping up the browsers used by the search engine spiders - I think this is unlikely.

Thanks for your opinion,

But I don't think that the seochat would not be targeting the users who are using opera, safari, netscape etc. Why don't these big names bother about the validation?

Regards
John

KingPin36 · Jun 18, 2008

Validation is good for one thing only and that's for the users and their browsers.

As for SEO, it makes no odds if the site validates or not.

KP

headdown · Jun 18, 2008

Got to agree with that. Getting a page validated does produce better code that could be easier to spider, but doesn't directly help the serps.

Alan38 · Jun 18, 2008

headdown said:
Got to agree with that. Getting a page validated does produce better code that could be easier to spider, but doesn't directly help the serps.

Absolutely right. It's nothing to do with SERPs or PR come to that. Its a check that the code conforms to the accepted specifications.

johnafrankllin · Jun 20, 2008

Thanks to all,
You all may be right (or must be), then why the site like wikipedia believes in this and for whom it makes its all the pages error free?? Also it has not given any link on the page to show its visitor that the page is valid XHTML document.

Regards
John

ohsuria · Jun 20, 2008

Interesting topic, I never analyze about this valid xhtml..
until now I always try to make my site to be valid.

if your html has one missing tag in the middle of your html.. but it still display correctly in firefox or ie.
will spider only crawl your half top content..? as it thinks your half bottom page is wrong..?

for example:

Code:

<html>

<p>
bla bla bla..
</p>

</div>
will this content still be crawled?
</div>

</html>

Please kindly advise and correct me if I'm wrong..

johnafrankllin · Jun 23, 2008

The search engine spider will read it as

<html>

bla bla bla..

will this content still be crawled?
</html>

It will ignore whatever it will not understand.
Since it will not find starting tag for DIV so it will ignore the closing tag for it.

Am I right?
please suggest someone.

regards
John

johnafrankllin · Jul 16, 2008

Hi everyone,
I think all of you should give your valuable inputs on the topic of W3 Validation. If it is required or not?
If not why some are doing this?
If yes whats the benefit of it.

Please make your valuable suggestions and guide me to the right direction.
regards
John

smeagain · Jul 16, 2008

If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing properly.
IMO a proper job would have to include W3C compliant code.

johnafrankllin · Jul 17, 2008

Hi,
Thanks for the response, but now the question is
Is it only one more thing to do in SEO ?
Does it not have any impact on SERP?

Regards
John

KingPin36 · Jul 17, 2008

Validation has no impact on SERPS nor does it directly have anything to do with SEO.

However, you should validate your sites {if possible} for users. If a site does not render in IE, FF, Opera or Safari right then the user may not stay or return to your site.

The only direct impact on SEO I would say validation has is page load times. Sloppy code and code that is not needed is just a no no.

Take a look at some high ranking sites for competitive keywords. Not all sites conform with validation rules because not all the time can you so what's needed SEO/SEM wise and get the validation just perfect.

It's a give and take situation.

KP

smeagain · Jul 17, 2008

Validation will pick up badly broken code as well as minor non-copliance. Very badly broken code "Can" trip up a spider. The biggest plus is as KP says is cross browser consistency. Worth it just for that.

dbbrock1 · Aug 27, 2008

I dont think it has THAT much of effect. Mainly search engines are concerned with your texts + backlinks. Not how well you can code.

camp185 · Aug 28, 2008

Target certainly thinks so. They just settled with the National Federation of the Blind for six million, U.S. Dollars, and are now dumping money to get the site right. They are also going to have their site audited on a regular basis for the next three years by NFB. Fun stuff!

Link to the Press Release about it: NFB - NFB

xhan · Aug 28, 2008

I don't think its necessary to have perfect code, because that usually means you have to compromise on a feature you want to include, just as long as your code isn't messy and sticks to the basic rules like b a text /a /b and using & amp ; etc!

euart · Sep 18, 2008

i don't tink so

johnafrankllin · Oct 16, 2008

Ok suppose there are three sites
1 has a code like:
<tr><td>This is dummy Text 1</td></tr>
2 has a code like:
<tr><td>This is dummy Text 2</td></tr>
3 has a code like:
<tr><td></td>This is dummy Text 3 </tr>

If a you are searching for the the term "Dummy Text"
Don't you think the no 1 position should be of 1 no 2 should be 2 and no 3 should be 3, because of their html codes

Since Spiders only reads HTML and they may be intelligent enough to know the correct markup.

Any comment please.

Regards
John

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