> XHTML is better yet again because of the increased > signal-to-noise ratio.
Rubbish! One thing that often gets incorrectly assumed is: XHTML = clean semantic markup HTML = lots of redundant nested tables & other crap By looking at the source of 100 random sites you might see this pattern emerging, but it is not a hard & fast rule. I can write HTML 4.01 code that is just as clean and semantic as any XHTML out there. Conversely I could write any sort of rubbish I want, make sure I put /> at the end of my image tags and then slap on an XHTML DTD. The charter for XHTML was exactly that - take the precise semantics of HTML 4.01 and make it XML compliant. So XHTML and HTML 4.01 are semantically identical. The fact that we have a history of people writing crap HTML and that the people who go to the trouble of putting an XHTML doc type on their files generally care more about there mark up is irrelevant. On 12/7/06, Tom Kerr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thu, Dec 07, 2006 at 11:25:38AM +1000, Scott Barnes wrote: > > On 12/6/06, Ryan Sabir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > How many of you are developing sites in XHTML these days? Is it > > > worth the extra effort? > > > > SOE is supposedly the ducks nuts as to why. Yet, you'd have to be a > > moron to expect Google to differentiate between XHTML vs HTML as in > > the end, content is the one commodity google and co want initially. > > > > I've read many a debate on it, but in the end the browsers are smart > > enough and will continue to evolve to the fact that tag prediction and > > differentiating between Style vs Semantically Correct tagging has > > probably become a moot point these days and usually reserved for the > > HTML purists out there. > > I'll throw in my purist $0.02 here, and no doubt regret having done so > (I usually do). > > I've not yet read an informed point of view that argued that Google And > Friends *bias* their scoring systems towards XHTML, or even valid HTML. > If you've got a link, I'd appreciate the chuckle. I think there's > little doubt though that they would like to extract all possible content > from whatever document you publish and classify it as best they can. > The argument tends to be more along the lines that an automatic process > is *better able* to extract and classify content from valid, well-formed > HTML that follows a known set of rules. XHTML is better yet again > because of the increased signal-to-noise ratio. Semantically correct > markup simply conveys more information about the document contents. > > No doubt there'll be a number of different experiences from those on > this list arguing for and against this conjecture. This seems to be the > nature of the heavy wizardry of SEO. However my own intuition is that > the search engines whose algorithms do not currently use semantic markup > to better classify content could only justify this with that argument > that there's not enough content out there which is semantically > organized. You'd have to be a moron to think that they wouldn't make > use of this extra information to improve their indexing and > categorization, in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of > their product. ;) > > -T > > > > -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "cfaussie" group. To post to this group, send email to cfaussie@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cfaussie?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
