Greetings to you,
I work for a small webdesign business on the beautiful west Coast of Scotland
and we always take great care and spend time ensuring that the sites we create
for our customers are fully compliant with W3C and contain no IIS violations.
This is done in the belief that, not only is it important to do things
correctly and "keep a tidy house", but, more significantly, I understood that
too many such errors and violations would result in those sites being adversely
considered by the Search Engine algorithms and consequentially being penalised
in the rankings.
As part of a recent promotion, however, we have been offering a free web
analysis for other sites. During these analyses, we came across a site which
had over 300 W3C errors and some 3500 IIS violations - and all this in only 15
pages or so. Astonishingly, however, this site was doing very well in the
rankings for relevant Search Terms.
It would seem that Consortia like W3C are valiantly creating standards to
improve the internet industry but, as yet, the major search Engines are not
paying much heed.
I appreciate that you cannot give me a definitive answer and I have no wish to
discuss individual cases but please can you give me an indication of just how
much importance is being ascribed to these errors and violations in the
relevant algorithms. I do not imagine they are ignored completely but, on the
other hand, there does not appear to be any significant advantage in taking the
care to ensure sites are compliant.
It may all be part of a more gradual process, of course, in which case I will
be glad to be prepared for the future - forewarned is forearmed after all.
Thank you for taking the time to consider my enquiry. I look forward to
receiving your response.
Kind Regards,
Irene
Argyll Technologies
