Hi Guys

I am currently working on a new site as my existing one doesn't have type declaration and does not comply with w3c. my new site is going to be xhtml transitional but at the moment I cant change the sites over.

Does it help rankings to have site validated with declaration??

What I am asking is will it help rankings to change over sooner rather than later...Not bothered about PR or anything just the above.

i remember reading somewhere that matt cutts once said google didn't expect pages to validate - expected the odd mistake here and there - almost hinting that it made the page more credible as a seo'ed site likely to be tightly coded

Validating will help you find mistakes in the page that may make it difficult for search engines to interpret the page correctly. However, in my opinion, one is not directly related to the other. Some professionals have the opinion that validation is necessary because you never know when Google will throw a "validation factor" into their algorithm. I find this highly unlikely, to be honest. Validation is never a bad idea, and it helps make your document more accessible and future-proof. It is not, however a be-all end-all, and will not directly affect your rankings.

I read some thing interesting on this topic on an other forum..here is the path:

http://forums.seochat.com/html-codin...te-164005.html

the simple answer is

NO IT WON'T

Validation makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to ranking!!!!!

valid sites will be faster and more compatible but, your rank will increase by the same rulles

I've never seen any differences in rankings when validating, but I I've seen the validated ones get crawled more often.

It doesn't have anything to do with your rankings. You should worry about your links and content...

W3C validation is helpful in correction on pages but it has no effect on search engine rankings. If your website is validated then it is a plus point .

No it doesn't. It's just a good thing to do.

Validation is something that you should use to make sure your site does not have any obvious errors, and to tidy the code up a bit, but is not really related to SEO.

sorry but what do you mean exactly by a "validated site"?

xhtml validation

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=re...a7qMB3gZ684veA

Not to be contrarian, but a validated site might have an impact on SEO...in a round-about-way. If bounce rate is one of the metrics for which position is determined, it would stand to reason that (all other things being equal) validated sites would have a lower bounce rate than non-validated sites because they display more consistently to all visitors. A lower bounce rate could result in a higher ranking.

Regardless, even if it has no impact whatsoever on SEO, validation should still be done.

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

Not to be contrarian, but a validated site might have an impact on SEO...in a round-about-way. If bounce rate is one of the metrics for which position is determined, it would stand to reason that (all other things being equal) validated sites would have a lower bounce rate than non-validated sites because they display more consistently to all visitors. A lower bounce rate could result in a higher ranking.

Regardless, even if it has no impact whatsoever on SEO, validation should still be done.

Interesting comment.

Basically:

  validation -> better user experience
  better user experience -> lower bounce rate
  lower bounce rate -> higher ranking

I'd bet more repeat visits too.

Originally Posted by wayfarer07

Some professionals have the opinion that validation is necessary because you never know when Google will throw a "validation factor" into their algorithm. I find this highly unlikely, to be honest.

Unless someone uses http://labs.google.com/accessible/

hi, I m current working on norway site in .aspx and i am not doing validate.

Google.com does not validate.

Originally Posted by awhite1

Google.com does not validate.

Doesn't rank for anything either..