Why doesn't google.com validate?

[hellmind]

They should validate.

Google say you must do the page in way and close our eyes and pray to rank, cuz they will do the right think.

But if we look what they do with their pages,then we should exploit every gap we got to rank no matter what.

So the definition of black hat would be, what google's can't detect.

[whothehellisthat]

I've always thought that validation is unimportant. What's important is the user's experience. No user looks at your code and says 'hmm... that bit there isn't valid. I'm not going to use this site'. For the most part, this goes for accessibility validation, too. Sure, some of it like title attributes, alt tags on images, etc., are a good idea, but there's a lot of annoying unnecessary stuff in there, too.

[TimmmmCam]

Fair enough I suppose, but it doesn't even have a closing html tag! That's just ugly.

[nuboy529]

I don't think they validate when you park at corpoate headquaters either... jerks.

[angadnadk]

Why fix what ain't broken? The aim of standardizing markup is to have no implementation-based differences. If Google can do a good job at that, then there isn't any need for it to comply to a third party's standards, no matter how popular that third party be.

[501airborneasycompam]

geek reatade



[e2kkot]

why would it validate? There are like 100 000 sites which actually validate. There is no SEO value in W3C compliance, so nobody cares about it.

[websitedesign4]

The very point of the W3C is to make web content available to all users, regardless of platform or disability. By not validating and by not preferring sites that do, Google is culpable. Google, don't be evil! Net neutrality matters - so does code neutrality! Open standards are the most important, proprietary code will just make the job harder in the future....

[2008stargate]

better idear how about thay check the sponsered link more often it used to have a link to a pedophil site

[BirminghamDan]

google will probably change its mind before long, because logic says that w3c-validation is an indicator of accessibility, and accessibility is in the interest of web users, so there should naturally be a preference for valid pages, even if only slight, it's certainly one to add to the 200-long list.

[xdragus]

If you check any of the big companies...many have 150+ errors. Perhaps it means that W3C is just a big joke on us that follow it to the bone.

[ceusa]

Boo! Excuses, excuses. Google needs to be a leader in standards and accessibility, like Yahoo! is doing. Not make excuses on how they can save money (bandwidth) and other B.S.

[EpicDewd]

Thank you!

[ParisVegaMedia]

Wow... I'm kinda surprised at how casually this issue was addressed. Is it really that hard for Google to see the benefits of a standards based internet? I wonder if they would see things differently if they would have been the ones to set the standard for HTML?

[XaviersSecretary]

I wonder why the Google channel doesn't allow comments on any of their videos or channel. How do you know what the people like or dislike, or want from Google if Google doesn't recieve responses?

I guess we're supposed to walk up to their front desk ;).

[CisMediaGuy]

Basically the google spokes loser said that they don't validate because 20 extra characters might cost their company a .03% increase in operating fees for delivering their website. Then he started blaming everyone else for google being lazy and then had the audacity to state that they will only do it, if someone else can do it for them for free.

[vrajesh]

Well, Validation is best thing for a web developer mostly. And sometimes, it is useful to believe that the webpage will be looking good in all OS and browsers and gadgets.

[alundraandseptimus]

Well it would be nice if you made the apps validate at least. Either way it's a pisspoor excuse if you ask me.

[woodsandhillsplc]

Agreed, in that it is annoying when Google code for third party things like Analytics mess up your validation.

[alundraandseptimus]

Agreed!! That code actually CRASHED my site for IE users. And when that happened, it was IE7, IE8 hadnt popped up yet.

[jarrod1937]

Then you have other serious problems. I test all additions to my site across different platforms and browsers and browser versions (and sub-versions) and never had analytics code fail that badly...

[alundraandseptimus]

@jarrod1937 It's MAJOR late in reply but no, I didnt have other problems. I tested it across all a bunch of OS's and browsers and the ONLY one with an issue was IE. I didnt know why so I just removed it. I couldnt be bothered dealing with it.

The page was white in the beginning then it would crash before loading. On some peoples computers it would just crash out without even starting. I hadnt changed anything on my site at all, just added that. It was fine before it :).

[SpartanPikachu117]

blah blah blah blaw

[madmad5000]

This realy sux. I understand that idiots are treated the same as professionals....

[DragonMasterMarf]

Don't you think that giving a little boost to pages that do validate would encourage people to make proper code? It wouldn't take much of a boost.

[almightyvegeta87]

Vast majority is referred to Blogger blogs which returns tons of validation errors.

If Google does not care about validation then nobody should care.

[sayweb]

brilliant as usual....

[rickvidallon]

W3C validation is not the web developers Holy Grail. Validation does not guarantee a site will look the same from platform to platform, from browser to browser. Validation does not assure that markup is efficiently written or adheres to a given entitys assessment of best practices. What it means is that the developer has coded a functional document and used no markup in addition to that specified by the guidelines.

[Karackal]

@rickvidallon "Validation does not guarantee a site will look the same from platform to platform, from browser to browser. " This isn't a bug, it's a feature! HTML is intended to define the markup and then every browser on every device does its best at rendering it according to its capabilities, screen size, etc.. Designers want their babies to look the same pixel by pixel everywhere but that just isn't how it is meant to be.

Designers not getting this cause a lot of pain for their users :-(

[plabrow]

Sorry Matt, this is an evasive reply. The fact that the majority of pages on the web don't validate has no bearing on whether yours do. Valid code does not take up any, or much, more size than non-valid. Valid code does not create compatibility issues.

[Webnauts]

With all respect Matt, I think something needs clarification here. Since when LSM (Layered Semantic Markup) and valid web sites have browser compatibility issues?

[reduxphl]

idiosyncratic browsers actually benefit from valid code, as otherwise they have to all fall back on their built-in error-correction, which is not consistent across different browsers. ho hum...

[schachin]

Not quite right Matt :) I coded new templates for SuperPages that were W3C compliant and worked in 85 browser/platform combinations (inc lynux, bsd and mobile) with no IE specific hacks or style sheets.

Granted that might not be all browsers out there, but does account for 99.9% of the users. So while it may be difficult it can be done.

But good explanation, even if it is not the impossible task it may seem to be! :)

[petrhos]

so, if most pages don't validate, should not the valid ones, have some kind of consideration for the time and work "spent" on that?

[schachin]

Actually they do - while Matt did say they do not check validation - & they do not - real world tests show the things that go into clean, valid and accessible code DO help websites do better in SEO.

[gosko]

Thanks for answering this!

Regarding byte count, why not move all the inline script and css stuff to external files which would then be cached? The first load may be slightly slower, but future visits would be faster.

Everyone has to deal with idiosyncratic browsers; there are plenty of valid sites out there that serve millions of visitors with no issues.

Also, why is it "important to realize that the vast majority of pages on the web don't validate"? Sounds like a cop out to me :)

cheers

[jarrod1937]

Well when you're serving up millions of people, just the structural code can make a very large difference. One reason why they minify their output code. If you save 15 kb of structure code from being transferred, over 1 million hits that could save up to 14 gigs of transferred data! Considering they get millionS of hits i'd gather they're save quite a bit through their efforts, far from a cop out.

[gosko]

"cop out" was referring to his claim that it's "important to realize that the vast majority of pages on the web don't validate"

Regarding byte count, if they were really worried about that they'd put all the css/js/image stuff in separate files that could be fetched once, then cached and reused over and over, instead of delivering them inline with each and every request.

[SueDavis68]

He really explains things well. Thanks Matt

[Neuhrer]

I like Matt's style. He is a very soft, kind and graceful man.

[sayweb]

who do you think google will hire for PR? Sylvester Stalonne?

[damianemanuel]

Congrats matts u are the best.