Why is Google's HTML so bad?

M

Mark

Check out this page:

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/options/

No doctype, table layout, presentation attributes, font tags...

If somebody posted this page here for a critique it would be ripped to
shreds.

Run it through the W3C validator:

---8<---
No DOCTYPE found! Attempting validation with HTML 4.01 Transitional.
Failed validation, 120 Errors
--->8---

HTML has to be pretty bad to fail validation against HTML 4.01
Transitional, and with no less than 120 errors.

Is this also a clue that Google doesn't really care about the quality of
HTML when ranking pages?
 
A

Andy Dingley

Is this also a clue that Google doesn't really care about the quality of
HTML when ranking pages?

No, because Google has grown to the size of being a Big Dumb
Corporate. People who grok HTML scraping don't get to influence its
generation on their own pages. Take a look at groups.google !

My own hobbby-horse with Google is the bad and resource-leaky
JavaScript in their client-side tools.
 
C

cwdjrxyz

Check out this page:

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/options/

No doctype, table layout, presentation attributes, font tags...

If somebody posted this page here for a critique it would be ripped to
shreds.

Run it through the W3C validator:

---8<---
No DOCTYPE found! Attempting validation with HTML 4.01 Transitional.
Failed validation, 120 Errors
--->8---

HTML has to be pretty bad to fail validation against HTML 4.01
Transitional, and with no less than 120 errors.

Is this also a clue that Google doesn't really care about the quality of
HTML when ranking pages?

You are using the UK Google site. The page structure and code on the
US Google site is somewhat different. However, validate
http://groups.google.com/grphp?tab=wg . It has 558 validation errors.
The home page for Microsoft has over 30 validation errors. The home
pages for Firefox and Opera validate. Many sites of large corporations
have been up many years and have just been patched from time to time.
As a result they are a tag soup of many versions of html and sometimes
xhtml and will validate as nothing. They tend to get fixed only to
correct a problem produced by an upgrade of some browser, and the fix
is often the minimum that will get rid of the problem - not a complete
rewrite of the site in valid code. One could neary say, the larger the
corporation and the older their web site, the more validation errors
it has. I suspect that because the code on many sites is extremely
long and would require much time to update, the powers-that-be in the
corporation see no need to spend a lot of money to update the site to
modern code and take the attitude that the site should just be kept
working with the minimum cost for writing code.
 
B

Blinky the Shark

Mark said:
Check out this page:

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/options/

No doctype, table layout, presentation attributes, font tags...

If somebody posted this page here for a critique it would be ripped to
shreds.

Run it through the W3C validator:

---8<---
No DOCTYPE found! Attempting validation with HTML 4.01 Transitional.
Failed validation, 120 Errors
--->8---

HTML has to be pretty bad to fail validation against HTML 4.01
Transitional, and with no less than 120 errors.

Is this also a clue that Google doesn't really care about the quality of
HTML when ranking pages?

Google doesn't care about anything except profit, Mark.
 
H

Helpful person

Google doesn't care about anything except profit, Mark.

--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project -http://improve-usenet.org- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

A business should be concerned about profit. Anyway, your statement
isn't true. They have recently become a major player in the green
energy business and their corporate philosophy towards their own
people is excellent.
 
A

asdf

[snip]
A business should be concerned about profit. Anyway, your statement
isn't true. They have recently become a major player in the green
energy business and their corporate philosophy towards their own
people is excellent.

Sounds like good, profit enhancing business practices to me ;)
 
J

John Clayton

Many sites of large corporations
have been up many years and have just been patched from time to time.
As a result they are a tag soup of many versions of html and sometimes
xhtml and will validate as nothing. They tend to get fixed only to
correct a problem produced by an upgrade of some browser, and the fix
is often the minimum that will get rid of the problem - not a complete
rewrite of the site in valid code. One could neary say, the larger the
corporation and the older their web site, the more validation errors
it has. I suspect that because the code on many sites is extremely
long and would require much time to update, the powers-that-be in the
corporation see no need to spend a lot of money to update the site to
modern code and take the attitude that the site should just be kept
working with the minimum cost for writing code.


Never mind big companies, same pretty well applies to our tiny,
insignificant company.
we try (tried) to write compliantly, then altered things about (often) over
several years and ended up with the "tag soup" described above.
To be honest, when you're trying to do all the other stuff in a business as
well, working out staff wages, chasing debtors, making things, persuing
work, learning to spell :) Compliance with legislation, elven safety,
languages.
Well we try to write good html but, given the choice of the pub on the way
home or studying the latest css.....what would most people do?
But thanks for all the good stuff (and humour) I enjoy on here!

John
www.ossettmouldings.com
- for info. only, please don't critique - certainly not brutally
 
B

Bone Ur

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:10:40
GMT John Clayton scribed:
Never mind big companies, same pretty well applies to our tiny,
insignificant company.
we try (tried) to write compliantly, then altered things about (often)
over several years and ended up with the "tag soup" described above.
To be honest, when you're trying to do all the other stuff in a
business as well, working out staff wages, chasing debtors, making
things, persuing work, learning to spell :) Compliance with
legislation, elven safety, languages.
Well we try to write good html but, given the choice of the pub on the
way home or studying the latest css.....what would most people do?

Dunno, but the correct answer is easy. Simply take the w3c specs to the
pub with you. They look better after a few brews, anyway, and you can
always "accidentally" leave them there.
 
C

Chaddy2222

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:10:40
GMT John Clayton scribed:


Dunno, but the correct answer is easy. Simply take the w3c specs to the
pub with you. They look better after a few brews, anyway, and you can
always "accidentally" leave them there.
I at times have a few drinks when working on websites, then I discover
that stuff does not line up correctly and manage to fix the site
before it goes live.
 
B

Bone Ur

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:03:44 GMT
Chaddy2222 scribed:
I at times have a few drinks when working on websites, then I discover
that stuff does not line up correctly and manage to fix the site
before it goes live.

Heck, I'll go ya one better than that. If the site don't "line up" right,
I call the customer immediately and convince him that he has to look at it
a certain way for it to work...
 

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