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Filed under: Developer, Internet, Web services, Google

Does Google reward bad code?

google bad htmlI can't really blame Google for making Gmail less featured in Safari, or completely unusable in Opera... But is it possible they are not only ignoring bad HTML when ranking sites, but actually rewarding sloppy code? Mark Daoust has set up a little test and reports on SiteReference that Google might be rewarding bad HTML with higher rankings. If his report is true, or if somehow in Google's intricate (and stock performing) search ranking code they are rewarding bad, sloppy, or just plain wrong HTML, why would someone bother to care if their code was valid? Worse, SEO's could suggest developers intentionally put crud in their code to boost their rank! These are long shots, and Mark's test isn't necessarily perfect, but it's a simple and somewhat scientific analysis of what could be a problem. Even more interesting is his analysis of MSN's handling of bad HTML code. I'll save the irony of that for when you read the article. The question is, is bad HTML evil, or just bad?
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