Why is Google"s HTML so bad?

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?

Re: Why is Google"s HTML so bad?

On 30 Nov, 16:34, Mark wrote:

> 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.

Re: Why is Google"s HTML so bad?

On Nov 30, 10:34 am, Mark wrote:
> 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.

Re: Why is Google"s HTML so bad?

Mark wrote:

> 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.

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

Re: Why is Google"s HTML so bad?

On Nov 30, 1:10 pm, Blinky the Shark wrote:
> Mark wrote:
> > 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.
>
> --
> 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.

Re: Why is Google"s HTML so bad?

[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 ;)

Re: Why is Google"s HTML so bad?

"cwdjrxyz" wrote in message
news:4679ae28-35c0-4864-85f5-9cb24831326f@e67g2000hsc.google groups.com...

> 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